


Chilton 2.0

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism), LaughingStones



Series: Until I Fix What's Broken [1]
Category: Motorcity
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cyborg Mike, Cyborg chuck, Cyborgs, Dehumanization, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control, Non-Consensual Body Modification, from Kane's end because he is a terrible boss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2018-10-20 07:24:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10657725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingStones/pseuds/LaughingStones
Summary: Mike blinks once, startled, and then bursts out laughing.  “Me?!” he says, and shakes his head as Chuck gives him a slightly hurt look.  “Chuckles, come on.  I’m a cadet, what am I gonna do in a lab?”“That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you,” Chuck persists.  “It’s a program--a cyborg enhancement program.  Uh...a super-soldier.  Program.”--Or: the story of how Mike Chilton became more than human, and then less, and then found a happy medium somewhere new.





	1. welcome to the program, cadet chilton

**Author's Note:**

> Warning in advance for some pretty unethical and inhumane medicine/science from Kane Co. Kane does not take good care of his bots. 
> 
> ((And thanks to Jem/LaughingStones/RollerskatingLizard, who wrote and brainstormed and brought some of the best parts of this fic to life. :D I love writing with you, amigo!))

Mike Chilton is extraordinary.

He’s knows that, kinda.  Extraordinary is just the word the Kane Co. Potential-Analysis Technicians like to throw around when Mike finishes his yearly testing, but he’s really just a guy doing his best.  His best is just...pretty darn good!  

Heck, Chuck is also extraordinary, although nobody seems to notice until they’re both fourteen and they start to add more numbers and theories and stuff to the cognitive testing.  For the first time ever, that year Chuck comes home with a starry-eyed look on his face and holds up a holo-screen with EXCEPTIONAL RESULT NOTICE, PURSUE FURTHER TESTING written on it.  Mike’s got a whole folder of those, but it would be pretty lame of him to mention that so instead he pitches in his citizenship points and gets Chuck a holobook about computers and programming and stuff.

“Wow,” says Chuck, and scrolls through line after line of weird, dense number-writing.  “Wow!  I didn’t know you could _write_  like this!  Like they’ve got their own language, that’s so cool!”

Chuck brings home a lot more EXCEPTIONAL RESULT screens after that.  Chuck draws plans on his tablet during class instead of taking notes on stuff he learned years ago--Chuck submits sheets of sketches and huge documents full of theories Mike doesn’t understand.  Chuck has a surgery he tells Mike not to worry about--another one.  Another three.  Chuck comes home with scars and new upgrades, stuff Mike has never seen before.

Mike doesn’t need upgrades, doesn’t shoot up with stimulants like some of the other Cadets do.  He doesn’t really get what Chuck’s doing, but at the same time he kinda does?  It’s just that when Chuck wants to make himself better he doesn’t work out, he...upgrades.  Changes his body with his brain.  It’s kinda cool!

It’s a couple of months after Chuck’s first surgery, and Mike is on temporary leave from cadet training for a mandated Kane Co.-sponsored holiday, when Chuck comes into the pod, dumps his stuff on the floor and says “Mike, we need to talk.”

The first thing Mike does is laugh, because _holy crap_ he hasn’t seen Chuck in _forever_ and that’s what he’s gonna lead with?  Hello to you too, bro.  And then Chuck punches him on the shoulder and Mike puts him in a headlock and Chuck sticks his fingers into Mike’s armpits and they kind of get distracted wrestling around like a couple of dumb kids.  

It’s a lot more fun than it used to be!  Mike has to actually work for it, because Chuck is just as hard to pin as he ever was, weirdly double-jointed and a _lot_ stronger now.  But eventually Mike’s got him pinned and Chuck is whapping ineffectually at his arms going “ _okay okay you big dope get off already_ ” and everything is right with the world.  Mike pushes himself up, pulls Chuck up with him and leaves an arm around his shoulders, just because--jeez, it’s been way too long.  Chuck rolls his eyes, but doesn’t shrug him off as they wander back toward their kitchen table and settle down.

“ _Anyway_ ,” says Chuck, with dignity.  “What I was trying to say--dude, get your feet off the table!  Do you know how many germs are on your boots?”

“Table’s self-cleaning,” says Mike, injured.

“It is _not_ , you doof.  They just tell people that because it sounds good.  I was trying to say, I came back because I’ve got, uh...an offer for you.”

“Oh yeah?”  Mike reluctantly takes his feet off the table.  “What kinda offer?”

“Well.” Chuck takes a big breath and fidgets a little bit.  “Y’know all those surgeries I told you not to worry about…?”

“Your super-secret upgrades,” Mike says, slightly amused by the nervous way Chuck is fiddling with his own hands, fingers knotting anxiously.  “Dude, I know you’re getting enhanced for some reason, it’s cool.”

“It’s not just stimulant implants or something!”  Chuck says, a little defensively.  “It’s not cadet-enhancement stuff, it’s...something new.  It’s a classified project.”

“If it’s secret, you shouldn’t really be telling me about it,” Mike points out, and Chuck snorts a little bit and shakes his head.

“Yeah,” he says.  “But I need a volunteer.  And they told me to find the best person for the job, and...I think it might be you, dude.”

Mike blinks once, startled, and then bursts out laughing.  “Me?!” he says, and shakes his head as Chuck gives him a slightly hurt look.  “Chuckles, come on.  I’m a cadet, what am I gonna do in a lab?”

“That’s what I’m tryin’ to _tell_ you,” Chuck persists.  “It’s a program--a cyborg enhancement program.  Uh...a super-soldier.  Program.”  

That--oh.  Mike’s laughter dies away as the look on Chuck’s face sinks in.  As the words he said sink in.  

“Are you serious, bro?”

“Yeah!”  Chuck’s hands are knotted together, fidgeting nervously--Mike’s eyes flick down as Chuck’s thumb strokes anxiously over the inside of his wrist, over and over again.  Mike’s never really bothered to pay attention to that gesture--if he looks closer he can see one of Chuck’s many surgical scars, straight and clean and healing-pink, leading up his wrist from his palm, up his forearm, disappearing under the sleeve of his shirt.  “Mike, the stuff we’re doing--it’s on a whole new level.  The parts are incredibly hard to make, they can only take one volunteer--”

And that’s...wow, that’s something else, and whatever they’ve been doing in that lab has definitely _worked,_ has at the very least turned Mike’s skinny, slightly wimpy best friend into a pretty respectable wrestling partner.  But Mike doesn’t _need_ that.  He doesn’t need to be stronger, faster--or to be a better programmer, not that that would be hard.  He can do that himself, he can make _himself_ better.

“I don’t need upgrades, dude,” he says, half-laughing again.  “Have you seen my scores?”

Chuck rolls his eyes and elbows him.  “Yeah,” he says, patient, “--I know you don’t need them, but they make stuff _better,_ y’know? And you’re the best, so...if you were going to make somebody even better than they are, why not go for the best?”

That...huh.  Mike blinks, almost taken aback by the thought.  “What about the people who do need it, though?” he says, and Chuck cocks his head on one side and frowns like that doesn’t make sense.  “Like...my arms and legs work just fine, I don’t need surgery on them.  Why not do the surgeries on people who don’t have arms and legs that work?”

A lot of stuff happens on Chuck’s face in a couple of seconds.  Mike can’t really follow some of it--confused and frustrated and fond and startled--but eventually he just kinda sighs and says “Yeah, and you...you _would_ say that, Mikey.  But that’s not how Kane Co. wants to do it.  So are you in or what?”

\--

Mike gets his first surgeries three days later.  They’re pretty fast--they tell him as they’re wheeling him in they’re doing both of his legs today, and some part of Mike wants to sit up and say _okay wait stop I don’t want--_ but then they’re putting the mask on him, and he’s fading away.

He doesn’t feel as different as he thought he would.  His legs feel heavy, for a day or two, sore along the seams and where the prosthetics connect under his skin.  But they’re giving him nanos and painkillers and all sorts of stuff and in less than a week Mike is running again, working his new legs.  They don’t feel tired the same way, and some small part of him aches at that--no more burn in his muscles when he runs and runs until he can’t go any more.  But he can jump at least twice as high, can run faster, can kick hard enough to break stone and bend metal, and honestly there are some trade-offs that aren’t so bad.

They do the arms next, and then some internal stuff that Mike doesn’t get nearly as much fun out of--heart stuff, organs.  Mike doesn’t really feel a difference, but they assure him the surgeries are very important.

The neurosurgeries are the worst.  Mike doesn’t have a problem with surgeries, but there’s something really wrong with being awake for them.  Even though they don’t have to cut him open like old-fashioned brain-surgeons had to, it’s freaky knowing there are tiny machines _in his brain_ right now, that somebody is installing tiny pieces of hardware in his _skull._  It’s even freakier feeling connections and weird, external thoughts suddenly pop up in his brain.  The techs all around him are constantly asking him questions, having him move this part or that one, open his screens, pull up his comm, recall random things from his training.

(That’s not the worst part, though.  The worst part comes at the end, when one of the techs says “Registration Inquiry?” and Mike’s body kind of shivers, Mike’s mouth says “Registration unassigned,” without any permission from him.  The techs all sighed and clapped each other on the back and cheered, and Mike sat there in the chair with the new tech buzzing in his head and felt... _bad._ )

But that’s all done now, and nobody has done anything like that since so it’s okay.  It’s fine, that’s fine, it’s not like Mike is going to need anybody to give him direct override commands.  He won’t have to feel that again, he’ll make sure of it.  So.  It’s fine.  

Three weeks after his last neurosurgery, he calls Chuck.

They told him not to call anybody, that he had to cut off contact to keep the project confidential, but Chuck is also in the project, right?  Mike talked to him, after the arms and the legs were all done, and Chuck told him if Mike needed to ask somebody something or talk about the surgeries, he should call!  Besides, seriously, the whole project is Chuck’s baby.  The plans, the proposal, whatever, it was Chuck’s in the first place.  So, Mike reasons, if there’s anybody in the city he can call, it should be Chuck!

Chuck looks...

Well, he looks tired.  A lot thinner than he did last time Mike saw him, which is saying something.  His hair has grown out a little bit, scrubby and golden and almost covering his eyes.  He jumps when he sees Mike, glances around like he’s afraid somebody is going to see, and then picks up the screen and stands, hurrying away from wherever he was with Mike’s comm screen held close to his chest.

“Aw, come on bro,” says Mike.  “Too cool to take calls from me now?”

Chuck’s face does something kinda weird, like a smile but kind of not happy.  “I just want to talk in private _,_ ” he says, really quiet.  “Dude, it’s been _forever._ How are they...treating you?  Over there?”

“Great!”  Mike grins, rolling his neck.  “They said I’m at 99% successful integration.  I guess that’s pretty good!  Did they tell you what your percentage is?”

Chuck’s face does that thing again, that unhappy twist.  Mike’s smile falls a little too, but Chuck just says “So you’re doing good. That’s...good.  That’s good.”

“Chuckles?”  Mike leans forward a little, trying to get a better look, frowning.  Chuck isn’t quite looking at him.  There’s a new scar on his cheek under his other eye now, Mike notices--it doesn’t look quite as neat and nice as Mike’s do.  It’s probably Chuck’s pale skin, making the scars look worse, but it looks less... _careful_ on his face than it does on Mike’s.  “Hey.  You okay?”

There’s a long moment of silence.  Chuck opens his mouth--closes it again, chews on his lip, then finally starts, “I just...bro, I’m--”

There’s a sound off-screen.  Chuck looks up abruptly, and for a second there’s a look on his face that’s almost _scared_.  Not just anxious, surprised by a noise, but actually scared.  But then, so quickly it’s almost hard to believe it was ever there, the expression is gone.  Chuck listens for a second as somebody off-screen says something too faint to hear--his eyes are still pulsing faintly every couple of seconds, and he nods a couple of times and says “Acknowledged” and then “standing by” and then “acknowledged” a couple more times.  He sounds pretty cool, like a real Specialist!  Mike sits and waits, rocking a little bit in place as Chuck listens.

And then Chuck turns back to him like there was never an interruption, grins and says “I’m great!”

Mike blinks at him for a second, slightly poleaxed.  “...huh?”

“I’m great!”  Chuck repeats, and smiles wide and bright.  “This program is pretty crazy.  I feel like we’re really getting somewhere with the new neuro implants, y’know?”  and then, before Mike can answer, “...look, I’ve got a headache, I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

“What?”  Mike half-laughs, a little bit relieved and a little bit hurt.  “Come on, Chuckles, but I haven’t talked to you in forever!”

“I’ve got a headache,” Chuck repeats, and his eyes flash again.  “I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

“Buddy--”

“Goodnight,” says Chuck, still smiling, eyes glowing, and the comm cuts out.

\--

Mike tries and fails to call Chuck seven or eight times over the next couple of weeks.  Chuck never picks up.  It occurs to Mike once or twice (or three times, or four) that Chuck might be mad at him for something, but he can’t think of anything he did that might have been wrong!  (The second, gut-dropping thought is that Chuck got in trouble for Mike calling him, but--that can’t be right, that’s not right, no.  Chuck is just really busy, that’s all).

So he throws himself into training instead.  His body has new capabilities now, new strengths and new weaknesses--Mike is still absolutely terrible at programming, but under the patient tutelage of a very bored-looking R&D coder he learns to recognize the most common bugs and hacks and how to counter them.  He learns how to enhance his vision and how to close down a sensory function for emergencies.  

It takes a week of calling, of busy screens and dropped calls, before Mike finally gets fed up with being subtle.

“Hey!”  

The technicians who’ve been observing him during his training look up, startled--Mike’s been friendly to them, but hasn’t really made much attempt at conversation.  Mike jogs over to them, still running hot on adrenaline from the obstacle course he just ran for them, determined to sort this out.  

“Uh…” the shorter of the two clears his throat, glances at his partner and then says, a little cautiously, “Can I, uh, help you? Specialist?”

“I just wanted to show my friend how my upgrades were working!”  Mike says, and pops the top off a hydration packet, pouring the formula into his mouth and then scrubbing the excess away from his mouth.  His heart is pounding, strong and hard, and he feels _great,_ and he’s definitely going to get to talk to Chuck.  “He’s in the program too, so it’s not--I mean, classified stuff, I can still talk to him about it, right?  I think he came up with the project, even, so…”

“Oh.”  The tech kind of glances at his partner--back at Mike.  “He’s...moved on to another project.  I thought they told you.  He’s behind an access wall now.  Sorry, Specialist.”

Mike’s great mood kind of...drains.  “Behind a what?”

“He’s classified,” the tech clarifies.  “His project, his whereabouts...Mister Kane’s orders, nobody is supposed to know where he is or what he’s doing.”

“Oh.”  Mike’s shoulders slump a little bit.  Chuck never called him back, and now he’s...what, he’s not allowed to talk to Mike any more?  For how long?  “Do you know--”

“I don’t know anything, sir,” says the tech quickly.  “Sorry.  All I know is that he’s gone, and we’re not allowed to know where.  That’s above our paygrade.”

“Oh,” says Mike again, quiet.  “Okay.  Well...thanks.  Anyway.”

“Yeah,” says the taller of the two, and kind of pats his arm.  “No problem.”

They run through a couple more tests after that, but Mike’s heart isn’t in it.  He turns in early that night, and for the first time in a couple of weeks he doesn’t try to call Chuck before bed.

\--

It’s five in the morning when Mike feels/hears/sees his comm system go off inside his head, a beeping alarm but inaudible, just a flare of awareness in his brain.  He rolls over, groans, scrubs at his face and then flicks the alert with his brain, opening it up to see what’s inside.

_Report to Executive floor for mission briefing.  This is not a drill._

Mike gets up, dresses quickly and quietly, badges out of his pod and starts running.  Nobody else is up and about yet, except the R&D people, who never seem to sleep--they keep their heads down, though, ignoring Mike as he jogs through their department to the tower’s core elevator system.  

Mister Kane is talking to a crowd of stressed-looking executives and a few R&D heads of department when Mike comes in and stands to attention, ready for orders--Mister Kane looks up at the sound of the door opening, brows drawn down angrily, shoulders tense, and Mike flinches just a little, having that look turned on him.  But then Mister Kane sees who it is, and the tension eases.  “No,” he says, to whatever the guy he was talking to is saying.  “Go back to your stations.  I’ll handle this.  But your _incompetence_ will have repercussions.”

The guy winces, but nods and backs away.  The crowd around Mister Kane hurries past Mike, throwing looks at him as they go; Mike nods and smiles a little at some of them, salutes the heads of department and high-ranking executives he recognizes.

“Mike.”

Mister Kane is waiting.  Mike hurries forward, sleepy but still eager to get to work, and Mister Kane looks him up and down and shakes his head a little, but not like he’s angry.  Kind of fondly rueful.  Mike’s heart does the same weird thing it always does when Mister Kane takes a second out of his schedule to spare him a word or an approving nod--kind of tight and light and warm.  He’s doing good, he’s going to do even better.  He’ll make Kane Co. proud.  

“I have a mission for you,” Mister Kane says.  “Your test results have been excellent so far--you should be more than capable of handling it.”  
“Yessir!” says Mike, and then hesitates.  “But, uh, my--Chuck, my friend, he was in the program before me, he should be further along--wouldn’t he be…?”

Mister Kane is already shaking his head.  “That...experiment...was a lab prototype,” he says.  “Serviceable, but not fit for active duty.”

Mike’s stomach twists a little bit at that, because, well...that’s good, right?  It's good Chuck’s not in the field.  He shouldn’t be in the field, Mike _protects_ him because Chuck hates to fight and he doesn’t belong in the middle of a war, but there’s something in the way Mister Kane said that, it just...

“Problem, Specialist Chilton?”

“Uh…” Mike shakes off the thought, straightens up a little.  Mister Kane just has to look at things from a CEO’s perspective, that’s all.  It sounds kind of harsh when he says it out loud, but really what he’s _saying_ is true, and a good thing.  Chuck’s not fighting.  He’s safe.  “N...no, sir.  He was just...a friend of mine.  He _is_.  A friend of mine.  I haven’t talked to him in a long time, we were busy, sir, and they told me he was doing something classified, so.  I just wondered if you had any updates.  Sorry, sir.”

Mister Kane surveys him for a second, impassive, eyebrows slightly raised, and then his face softens some.  “Well,” he says.  “Keep up the good work and I’m sure that can be arranged.”

Mike’s heart leaps in his chest.  “Yessir!” he says eagerly.  “I mean--yes sir, I was--I always give my best, sir!”

“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t use some extra incentive, every now and again,” Mister Kane says, and waves the point away.  “How are the new upgrades?”

Mike bounces on his feet a little—rolls his neck, enjoying the smooth functionality of his bones and muscles.  “Great, sir.  They’re amazing.”

“Good!”  Mister Kane smiles at him, and something hot and sweet swells in Mike’s chest.  He stands up as straight as he can, and Mister Kane claps him on the shoulder, heavy and affectionate and ( _fatherly,_ no, shh) warm.  “Are you ready to go try them in the field?”

“I was born ready, sir!” says Mike, and salutes, glowing from the inside out, lit up.  (And it’s not just a metaphor, and he can feel his eyes glowing golden-green, strange and warm.)  “I won’t let you down!”

\--

Mister Kane said Mike would be more than capable, and he was right.  Mike catches up with the rogue scientist well outside Deluxe, halfway down the long sloping road to Motorcity. Even with the strength of panic in his swings the guy's no fighter, and Mike sweeps his feet out from under him, brings him down without even hurting him.

He keeps struggling as Mike cuffs him and hauls him to his feet to start marching him back up to Deluxe, and he's babbling the whole time about ethics and disease protocols and other stuff, too, saying things that Mike would assume are lies except he knows what it looks like when someone's lying. This guy's not in any state to be making things up, but the accusations he's making against Kane Co are crazy. Maybe he's lost his mind? Maybe that's why he defected in the first place.

Except the more Mike listens, the more he realizes his story hangs together. Uneasy, he opens a line to Mister Kane with a mental flick--which is still weird.  Mike has been fiddling around cautiously with his neural implants ever since the surgeries, and there’s some pretty crazy stuff in there--audio channels filtered straight into his brain, distress beacons and translator units--but for some reason the weirdest part is still how easy it is to just turn on his comm with his brain and reach out for people with it.

“Sir!” Mike says as soon as the call connects. “Mission successful, we're on our way up.”

The image of Mister Kane floating in front of him raises one bushy eyebrow. “Technically your mission was to apprehend and _retrieve_ the subject, so you haven't completed it yet. Is there a problem of some kind, Specialist?”

Whoops, he's not pleased. Well, he won't be when he hears this, either.

“I think there might be. Sir, how would we know if someone below you was giving orders to people in R&D and saying they're from you?”

Mister Kane snorts. “Don't be ridiculous. I review every project that gets underway, I think I'd notice that.”

“But sir, he's talking about some kind of disease he was meant to engineer to infect Motorcity, and he seems to think--”

Mister Kane’s expression darkens. “You aren't supposed to be having a pleasant _chat_ with him, Specialist Chilton, you were told to catch the traitor and bring him back!”

Mike’s chin snaps up, the closest he can get to bracing to attention when he's moving. “Yessir! I was just concerned you might not be aware of that project, sir!”

“Of course I was aware! The nerve he has to even discuss it when he's the one who sabotaged it!” Mister Kane’s hands clench into fists. “Months of work, destroyed! We could have had an end to the whole despicable lot of them if he hadn't--”

“Sir?” Mike stops walking. The man he's pushing along lurches to a halt, flinching every time Mister Kane growls. “A--an end? It was… really supposed to be lethal?”

“Well, it certainly wasn't a slight cold!” Mister Kane snorts. He waves a hand. “Nothing’s ever guaranteed, but the survival rate was projected to be three percent or so. Adequate, for our purposes.”

Mike's heart can't skip beats or stutter in his chest anymore, but he can still feel sick, apparently. Everything has gone strangely hollow and distant, and when he speaks, his voice seems to echo in his skull. “S-sir. You approved that project?”

Mister Kane’s brows snap down. “Do you have a _problem_ with that, Specialist?”

Mike's spine straightens automatically, even as he says, “It's just--you can't--that's thousands of people! Even in Motorcity, they can't possibly _all_ be criminals, we can't just wipe them out!”

“There is no ‘we’ here,” Mister Kane says coldly, “and no ‘can't’. I can and will do whatever is best for the people of Deluxe, and I don't expect to have to explain myself to my officers!”

“Do you hear what he's saying?” the terrified scientist hisses as Mike's grip on his arm twitches. “He wants to kill the entire city! I can't be responsible for that, you have to let me go--”

Mike's eyes are fixed on Mister Kane’s face. This can't be real. It's got to be some kind of test, Mister Kane will nod in a moment and smile and say he knew he could depend on Mike to make the right call and of _course_ he didn't know about any

\-- _disease being designed to wipe out an entire population_ \--

\--he's not going to say that, is he.

Mister Kane’s eyes narrow. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Executive Command,” he says, and Mike goes stiff, confused, hoping he's going to cancel the mission, set everything straight--“Restrict audio input:  lock all channels to this frequency, voiceprint Abraham Kane, authorization one seven four nine.”

Acknowledged, Mike says, tries to say, but he can't hear himself even though his mouth moves, air goes out like he's speaking, his chest falls as he breathes out. He thinks the scientist has stopped talking, and then Mike looks at him and his mouth is still moving.

It's like he's suddenly gone deaf. The world is on mute.

Except for Mister Kane, who says, “Apparently I should have done that to start with. Now that you won't be further _distracted_ , are you ready to complete your mission, Specialist?”

What did you do to me? he tries to say, and for the first time wishes his systems weren't so perfectly regulated. It’s wrong that he's breathing so calmly when the world is falling in on him, when his hands should be cold or sweating, his heart should be pounding. It’s like his body isn't really his.

Mister Kane’s mouth twists and he sighs again, more heavily. “I didn't want to do this, Chilton, but you've forced my hand. Command, Override Omega.”

Mike's body goes rigid, and--

Something skews sideways in his head, something twists in a way that doesn't feel right--

His mouth moves around the word Acknowledged even though he didn't decide to say it, he never does, it just comes out, he's gotten used to it (he doesn't like it, it's weird, but he puts up with it)--

“Carry out your assigned mission,” Mister Kane says.

Acknowledged, Mike says without meaning to, and--

His body moves on its own. It steps forward, stoops to heave the silently talking or yelling or pleading scientist over one shoulder, and starts forward at a fast walk up the steep road.

A second later he feels the live spot in his mind go blank and dead as Mister Kane closes the line.

\--

By the time they reach Kane Co tower, Mike has stopped struggling to take control again, stopped mentally screaming, trapped in his own head, gone through horror and fury and desperation and settled into numbness.

He turns the scientist over to a squad of Elites waiting for him (doesn't want to, wants to let him go free, watches helplessly as his body puts the man down and straightens up, stands still). One soldier nods to him, brings up a screen and types. A message pops up in Mike's vision, one line of text: _Report to lab 517._

Mike feels his arm come up in a salute, watches the world wheel around him as he spins and marches away to the lab.

\--

On his back, strapped down, bright light overhead. His hand is twitching. He tries to stop it.

It stops.

He's gasping for breath suddenly even though he doesn't need to, because he _can_ , his lungs move when he tells them to and so do his hands and feet and head, his body obeys him now. His eyes are stinging and he almost doesn't care, the relief is too powerful. They fixed it, they stopped it, his body is his own again. Mister Kane had a change of heart, he didn't mean to do that in the first place, maybe he didn't even know what it really did--

A quieter thought says, _He was going to kill everyone in Motorcity.  He said it, he_ told _you.  He coded half the programming in you himself. What are the chances he didn't know_.

Unease creeps through Mike, muddying the giddy relief even as he tries to argue. He must have misunderstood something, the scientist was crazy and Mike shouldn't have been listening to him, Mister Kane got angry because he could tell Mike was about to botch the mission--

 _So why didn't he explain the truth about that project. Why did he make it sound exactly like he planned to spread a lethal sickness through Motorcity--which is incidentally way too close to Deluxe for that to be safe. Unless he sealed off all the passages between the two, which he's been trying and failing to do for years, people would flee up here, and Deluxians would die. And he still approved the project_.

Mike's mind spins, desperately trying to find other explanations, make excuses, and the quiet, despairing little voice keeps shooting them down. (It sounds kind of like Chuck.)

This can't be right, he's got to be missing something--

_You've been missing it for years. He's not the person you thought he was. That's it._

God, _no_.

...Years, working for a man who could put so many people at risk for a rabid vendetta against an entire city. Years working for a man who could casually discuss the slaughter of a whole population. And Mike was serving him willingly, _happily_. He can't get his head around it, this _can't be right_ \--

A door opens, distant in the next room. ... _Also, being strapped to an examination table is usually a bad sign_ , the voice that sounds like Chuck adds.

Voices, muffled behind a closed door but clear enough to Mike's ears.

“--wipe program hasn't been thoroughly tested yet, sir, it could have detrimental--”

“I want it done _now!_ ” Mister Kane says, and Mike's muscles tense at the sound of his voice, edgy and ready for action but he doesn't know what to _do_. Attack, run, confront him? ...What to do if Mike wasn't strapped to this table, that is.

“Yes sir. What is the start and end point of the desired alteration?”

“He left on the mission about two hours ago. That's the starting point. The end point is the current moment. I want his memory of this afternoon to start when you wake him up.”

No. _No_ , he wants to erase everything Mike just found out, Mike won't know that he needs to question orders now, that Mister Kane is--might be willing to do terrible things-- He pulls carefully against the straps holding his arms in place, judging the give. They're heavy leather, reinforced with some kind of wire, he thinks, pretty sturdy.

“Yes, sir.”

“In the meantime, I have another set of protocols to install before you wake him.”

“Before we--oh, uh, we thought--we already--”

Crap. Giving up on stealth, Mike wrenches at the straps with all his enhanced strength, tears his arms and legs free, (he'll have bruises but his bones are a lot stronger than normal, nothing breaks), rips off the chest strap with both hands and rolls off the table as Mister Kane and another man come through the door. Mike freezes for a second, _attack run confront salute RUN, exit blocked ATTACK_ and he lunges as Mister Kane raps out, “Command, Override Omega!”

Mike stops dead.  Stands up straight and still, all his cries of protest caught in his throat and trapped inside his head.  Mister Kane is watching him, motionless within arm’s reach, and he’s-- _wrong_ , this is wrong this is _evil_ , but Mike can’t move to hit him.  Can’t even move to run.

Mister--no.  Kane watches him for another minute, and then scowls and turns away from him, leaves him there standing still and quiet and trapped and turns to the technicians behind him instead like Mike isn’t even a concern anymore.  Like he’s not even here to worry about.

“ _Well?_ ”

“Sir, I'm sorry sir,” a tech behind Mike stammers, “it's basic procedure to return him to standard operation before anything else to avoid program conflicts, so we canceled the previous override--”

“Did I tell you to wake him up,” Kane growls quietly, and Mike knows that tone, that quiet menace.  Apparently the other man does too, because when he answers his voice is small and shaky.

“...No, sir.”

“No. I did not. Report to my office when you're finished here.”

“Y-yes… sir.”

“In this case, you can ignore _basic_ _procedure_ unless you want your head ripped off by a malfunctioning cyborg. Now _fix him_.”

\--

Mike shakes his head. Half the day is gone. He’s here now.  Mister Kane is standing in front of him, and Mike is...Mike has an error.  “Sir, what happened?”

“You almost failed a mission.” Mister Kane looks angry, brows low over piercing eyes.

Mike stares, forgetting himself for a minute in his shock. He's never failed a mission before, never failed the smallest assignment since the first time Mister Kane personally gave him an order. He would never fail, that would be letting Mister Kane down.

“S-sir?”

“You were asked to make a sacrifice for the good of Deluxe,” Mister Kane says, and the words are almost brutally hard, like he wants to hurt Mike with them.  “You failed to do so.  You forgot where you came from, who your _loyalties_ lie with.”  

He looks at Mike’s face, and he must see the horror in it, because his shoulders relax just slightly.  He sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose like Mike’s giving him a headache.  

“...we’re looking into the possibility of an insurgent hacker,” he says, and Mike’s heart leaps a little, painfully hopeful.  So somebody might have made him do it, they must have.  Mike would never forget his loyalty to Deluxe--and that explains why he doesn’t remember!  It’s a huge relief, knowing he wasn’t--he’s not--  “But we need you ready to do what’s necessary to protect Deluxe from those…” his voice starts to rise, like it always does when he talks about Motorcity--he forces it back down, folds his hands behind his back and looks Mike over.  “Your loyalty to Deluxe is second to none,” he says.  “I expect better results on your next mission.”

Mike tries again to remember anything of the afternoon, but everything after being given a retrieval mission is a blank. “Sir,” he says.  “Why can’t I remember--?”

“There was some...data lost, when we recovered you,” Mister Kane says sharply.   _No need to ask further,_ Mike hears in the words--he nods.  Of course.  Mike doesn’t need to know exactly what happened last time to do better next time.  And he will do better, a lot better!  He'll fix this, he'll make up for it.

Straightening sharply, he salutes. “I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen again.”

\--

(It happens again. He tries to abort a mission; Kane overrides him. They wipe his memory.)

\--

“That's the last time I put up with this shoddy performance!” Kane snaps a week later, after two more memory wipes. “From now on, Elite Unit Specialist Chilton will _only_ function under an active Omega override! If you idiots cancel it ever again when you reset him post-mission, I will not be pleased.”

The pause that follows is full of nervous shuffling and noisy breathing (one of the project technicians has a cold) before someone finally breaks the silence. “Sir,” she says tentatively, “the Omega program wasn't designed to run full-time. If it's left active for longer than, oh, four days maybe, it could--there might be a cascade effect with the minor glitches we've already been dealing with.”

“So he'll have mandatory downtime every four days so you all can tune him up again,” Kane says dismissively. “The glitches don't affect his ability to accept and execute orders, do they?”

“Thus far they don't seem to,” the technician says after a second when no one else volunteers an answer.

“Then they're irrelevant.”

This pause is filled with that feeling of welling shame and guilt that becomes so familiar to most R&D employees at Kane Co. Everyone avoids each other's eyes and no one says “But what about the guy's quality of life?” They've been here long enough to know better.

“Come on,” says a technician, and takes Mike’s arm.  He doesn’t move.  “Uh...command: follow me.  We’ll tune him up right now, Mister Kane.”

Mike follows.


	2. comply with your handlers, special unit chilton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I’ll dig out that treacherous streak if I have to empty out your skull to do it!" He raises his voice and Chilton _shakes_. "Override Omega! _Kill him_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please be mindful of your own mental health. If you couldn't guess by the trajectory of the previous chapter, the summary and the chapter title, this is not a good chapter for Mike.

Mike can't tell if he's angry anymore.

He thinks a while ago (how long? It's hard to track time when he sometimes gets shut down unexpectedly and he never knows if it lasts for minutes or days. His chronometric function is glitched and it's a low priority to fix) he knew what he was feeling. Not in detail, he never thought much about what went on inside him, but he knew angry, sad, scared, could tell them apart and name them if he had to.

These days he can't, it's all a tangled mess. He can't label the different parts anymore, he just knows there are a lot. Anger is the only one he's pretty sure is there, and even that is a hot fog over the rest of the mess.  Indistinct, formless.  He feels...

Sometimes he thinks it's everything. He feels so much and it's so powerful, it has to be just about everything a person _can_ feel. Except the good things. Happiness. Hope. Not much of those any more.

Or heck, maybe he's wrong and they're in there too. He thinks they'd make it better, but he's not really whole anymore, he's forgotten a lot; maybe those things hurt as much as all the rest and they're just blending in.

His body still looks the same from the outside, and that almost makes it worse.  Mike catches glimpses of himself in glass and reflective polymer, and sees a familiar face, the same build--they change his insides, scramble his brain, but the plans they’re working from were originally Chuck’s, not some heartless Kane Co. executive.  They’re made, Mike knows now, to soften the blow a little.  To leave as much of him intact as they can, to make him look the same even while they’re putting armored polymer plates in over his spine, over his knuckles, under the skin of his arms and legs.  He could take a plasma bolt to an unprotected arm and come through the other side--bloody and scorched, but ready to fight for Kane Co.  On the inside he’s an armored tank, a machine, a _weapon_.  On the outside he’s a teenage guy, eyes a little bit too distant, brown skin streaked in faint pink scars, eyes hard and dark and hair cut short to his skull.

The haircut was one of the first things they did when he went under permanent override, and it still takes him by surprise when he sees himself.  Kane directed the man who cut it, grabbing Mike’s jaw impersonally with one big, rough hand.  Turning Mike’s head to point out what he wanted as Mike stared ahead, snarling inside but blank on the outside, going wherever he was put.  It’s short, now--sheared close on the sides and back, barely longer on top.  It gives Mike’s face a sharp, carved, hungry look, without the comfortable mess of brown hair to soften his cheekbones and cover the abrupt slash of his eyebrows.  His eyes aren’t in shadow anymore, but somehow they look darker, harder.  

Even if Mike was allowed to see anybody he used to know, he thinks sometimes, they wouldn’t recognize him any more.

He thinks about Chuck sometimes, when he's been on multiple missions in a row without a shutdown, when he's exhausted and his mind drifts (not like it matters, does it, not when his body does all the work without input from him). A lot of the older memories are hazy from everything that's been done to his head, but he can remember when Chuck saw him for the first time after his surgeries, the last time they talked face to face.  Mike kind of expected them to get the same kinds of mods, but Chuck had all sorts of stuff that Mike didn’t need--data and coding and stuff, the planning and thinking, the tactics and strategy mods.  One of the last clear images Mike has of Chuck’s face is of him smiling wide, bursting with pride as he showed Mike how many screens he could bring up at once.  The way his hands shaped the air as he tried to explain the complicated programming thing he was running on them, and the way he rolled his eyes and laughed when Mike didn’t understand a word of it.  Mike had laughed too, and shown Chuck how Mike could lift him with one arm now, and do a picture-perfect standing backflip.

It hurts, thinking of Chuck, because he knows he'll never be allowed to see him again. Mike's an asset, not a person  Nobody even bothers with the title “Specialist” anymore--he’s a Special Unit now, and company assets don't have friends.

He thinks about him anyway.

He wonders how Chuck’s doing, if he's happy. Chuck was only supposed to handle code and stuff, he's probably buried in a lab somewhere with people to bring him food and make him drink enough, totally involved in his work. He probably has no idea about any of Kane Co’s nasty secrets, and Mike is glad. This way he's still happy and safe.

(“I should have terminated the first prototype sooner, before he got one of my most promising security officers involved in this _pointless_ waste of resources,” Kane snarls before one wipe.  “If I’d known the amount of trouble this... _super-soldier_ business was going to cause, I would have thrown him off the tower myself.”)

(Mike hears, knows for a second who that first prototype is. Hears _terminated_ and _should have done it sooner_ and for a second everything inside him _screams,_ he feels like he’s falling and even under the override his vital signs on the monitor spike as his body tries to fight, run, sob, scream _not him he has to be safe not Chuck no no no no no--_ )

(Mike forgets)

...Motorcity isn’t safe.  He goes down there and people shoot at him, scream, run from him, they’re not safe down there (they’re not safe because of you).  He knows vaguely, without knowing why he cares so much, that he’s glad Chuck isn’t fighting, because he needs Chuck to be safe.  Doesn’t know why that thought occurs to him so often--Chuck _is_ safe.  He’s a programmer, a code-writer, he’s not a soldier.  There’s no reason for him to go anywhere dangerous, he’ll just stay in Deluxe, working somewhere quiet, _not fit for active duty_.  (Mike worries about it anyway.)

Motorcity is colors.  Is noise, when Kane doesn’t remember to block Mike’s audio feed before a mission.  Motorcity is the place where Mike is told to hurt people, scare them, place Kane’s traps and make his threats for him.  

Some part of Mike thrills every time he goes down, to see bright colors and living darkness instead of white and blue and too-small isolation chambers.  But Motorcity doesn’t welcome him, doesn’t let him get a foothold.  Kane Co. shuts off his voice before they send him to do their dirty work.  They dress him in white and blue and keep his hair cut short-- _appropriate length, approved style, orderly_ \--like they never did when he was Kane’s favorite.  Kane let him be anything other than a copy-pasted soldier in a line of soldiers because Mike was his favorite and he was _stupid,_ so _stupidly_ convinced--

Nobody in a Deluxe uniform looks human, to a Motorcitizen.  Mike knows that much.  After the first time somebody shoots him, he knows.  It _hurts._

It used to hurt, anyway.

When he first went under Omega, back when he was still lucid, Mike resisted however he could. There wasn't much he could do at first, but he's never been good at knowing a losing fight when he sees one, and he kept trying. Eventually he found that although he doesn't understand the code running the programs in his head, he can still affect it. It feels kind of like… elbowing himself a space in a crowd, except all the people pressing against him are lines of code, stacks of data. People would move aside or push back, but his programming isn't alive: if he elbows hard enough, things break.

Not necessarily things he _wants_ to break, of course, because especially at the beginning he had no idea what he was doing. He had a stutter in all his movements for three days once before he got called into the lab for maintenance and they fixed it. Another time his eyes shut off, and that was completely terrifying, not least because he'd just been given a mission and with the override he couldn't speak up and say there was a problem. Fortunately, that time someone noticed that he was walking tentatively with his hands out to the sides and called Kane to ask for orders before Mike could get very far, and he got sent to the lab again, mission postponed. (Kane was Not Pleased, but had no one to blame.)

He learned from it, though, noted what had bad effects and what didn't, kept track of what various areas in his mental landscape seem to correspond to. He never broke his vision again, and the glitchy tremors his limbs pick up sometimes are side effects of conflicts in the code patches, nothing he's caused.

These days he keeps working at it because he knows he thought it was important, back when he could think clearly. He knows more or less where the active orders are, and he usually pokes that area. Sometimes he gets petty and breaks his comm center instead, so it's just a little harder for Kane to give him orders. The techs who work on him are used to the constant glitches, seem to expect them by now.

He doesn't know why it's important. If he could break free of the override he would have done it by now. He keeps it up mostly because he's stubborn, and he will not stop fighting even if it's pointless. Resistance for the sake of resistance, long past remembering why.

All he remembers is that he can’t stop.

\--

The Special Unit doesn’t _stop_.

R&D has been running physical capacity tests for the better part of 16 hours, and under the override he just... _functions._  His eyes are distant, his face is flushed and his tank-top is sticking to his back and chest with sweat, but he fulfills every test and then comes back to a perfect, blank-faced parade rest, awaiting further orders.  It’s like testing an android, except an android wouldn’t bleed or sweat or...smile a little bit, when one of the techs stops the tests for a minute and brings him a hydration capsule and some energy bars.  It was faint, barely a twitch of that expressionless face, but it was a smile.  For a second, his eyes seemed infinitely more present, warm and dark.

...and then Mister Kane came striding through the door, and Special Unit Chilton went still as a machine.

He doesn’t function as smoothly, with Mister Kane there.  There are noticeable glitches in his performance, stutters in his motions.  It just looks like human error if you’re not looking closely, and Mister Kane either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, but there’s a difference.  Special Unit Chilton didn’t _make_ human errors, before.  

Now he pulls punches, slips steps, jitters and jerks in tiny spasms as he stands at attention for further orders.  His eyes don’t stare peacefully ahead; they follow Mister Kane as he paces the room, watching.  Chilton’s throat works.  His eyebrows twitch.

“...he’s taking the override well,” Mister Kane says, and there’s a tone to his voice that’s hard to read.  The techs glance at each other, mouths thin and shoulders tight and old bruises aching.

“...yes, sir,” says one of them, slow and careful and patently untrue.  Mister Kane doesn’t seem to notice the tone.  

“Reroute a prison pod to our location,” he says abruptly.  “A violent criminal, a dissenter.  Any of the double-A prisoners.”

A murmur--double-A is meant to be a life-sentence, and accessing the pod controls for that level of the detainment floor is likely to get you locked up there.  Mister Kane turns on the man closest to him, brows drawn low and impatient.

“Well?!”

“Y-yes--yessir!”  

The pod takes a while to get there, once it’s been rerouted.  Mister Kane watches long enough to see it on its way, and then nods his satisfaction and walks forward.  

“Special Unit Chilton,” he says, and Chilton jerks, turns his head, eyes wide and dark and strange.  “Parade rest.”

Chilton comes over, but he doesn’t do it fast or smooth.  His steps hitch, slow and dragging; his eyes are hard and his thin lips are a straight, brutal line in his bruised face.  He settles into parade rest, head held high and back ramrod straight, and looks at Kane like he wants…

He looks at Kane, and the techs all step back a little bit in unison, putting space between themselves and their boss.  You don’t get to be high-ranking in Kane Co. R&D without some healthy self-preservation instincts.  

“Enjoying yourself, Mike?”  Mister Kane says, and that tone in his voice is still there, stronger and stranger now.  He doesn’t sound pleased, exactly...just grim, or tired, or...something.  Strangely soft for the harsh schedule of tests and repeated overrides he’s forced Chilton into.  The question should be mocking, but it just sounds almost regretful.  

Chilton’s lips twitch, his brows draw down. He hasn’t been ordered to answer, isn’t allowed to, but a kind of wordless, feral _snarl_ comes from somewhere low in his chest.  Kane looks at him for a long time, and then raises his chin and sneers back.  

“A high-level prisoner is going to be released into the training ground in fifteen seconds,” he says.  “Apprehend him.  Bring him here and restrain him.”

Chilton’s throat works.  “Yes,” he says finally, hoarse and ragged, and the voice is so human it’s almost startling.  So full of hate it’s frightening.  “ _Commander._ ”

The pod slides smoothly through a perfectly-sized opening in the wall of the tower.  The wall closes behind it as blocks of the floor shuffle neatly out of the way, and the prison pod lowers into the floor and locks into place.

Special Unit Chilton is on the prisoner the second the pod wall slides away.  The prisoner has a second to stare around, to see the people watching him, to see Kane and start forward, teeth bared with fury, before Chilton slams into him and bears him to the ground, pinning him in seconds.  The man struggles, twists and then manages to drive an elbow into Chilton’s diaphragm; he huffs out a breath, jerking, but he’s not human anymore.  He wheezes, winded, but doesn’t pull away.  Just pins that arm too, eyes distant and face blank.

“Good.”  Mister Kane says.  “Let him up.”

Chilton follows orders.  The prisoner scrambles away immediately, eyes wide, staring from Chilton to Kane.

“What the hell is this?” he says.  Mister Kane ignores him.  

“Special Unit.”

“ _Commander,_ ” Chilton grits out.

“Hit him,” says Mister Kane, and Chilton stops, jitters, does.  The punch knocks the man staggering, nose dripping blood, eyes wide.  Chilton pulls back, breathing hard, head down. “Again.”

Another punch, pulled hard this time.  Chilton is transparently fighting every inch, and the punch hits but doesn’t make much impact.  The prisoner is staring at him, at his face, at his dark eyes, obviously almost as unnerved and concerned as he is terrified and angry--Mister Kane’s lips thin.

“Hit him like you mean it!” he barks.  “I didn’t train you to be a weakling, Chilton, I trained you to fight for this city and I’ll dig out that treacherous streak if I have to empty out your skull to do it!”  He raises his voice, a rough snarl, and Chilton actually _shakes,_ shudders all over like the words are painful.  “Override Omega!   _Kill him._ ”

Chilton takes a step forward, face blank, and then stops.  Takes a step back.  The prisoner scrambles back, eyes wide and fists raised, pale as paper, but Chilton doesn’t lunge for him again, lightning-fast and more-than-human.  He’s staggering, shaking, barely upright.

“No,” he says, strangled, and takes a step forward.  He’s not supposed to be able to speak, but he doesn’t stop--over and over again, “No, no, no, no,” in a frantic, mechanical rhythm, like a heartbeat.  Like a ticking bomb.  His eyes flash green-gold under the shadow of his bangs.  “No.  No, no--”  and he stops again, spasming all over like he’s having a seizure, legs almost buckling under him.  

“I said kill him!”  Mister Kane barks, and Chilton winces.  “That’s an executive order, you will do as you’re told!”

Special Unit Chilton takes another step forward, and then lets out a noise that’s barely a human cry at all--a terrible, tortured sound.  His legs give out; he falls on his knees and then forces himself upright, hunched over like he’s in horrific pain, panting hoarse and rough.

“The override is supposed to remove any inclination toward resistance,” mumbles the senior tech feverishly, eyes fixed on Chilton’s twisted face.  “He shouldn’t have the capacity to even comprehend resistance is--”

“I don’t care what he _should be!_ ”  Mister Kane rounds on him.  “Obviously he’s defective--find the issue and fix it!”  

“That’s as much control as we’ve _got,_ sir, there isn’t a level above--”

The prisoner steps over Chilton’s shuddering body and sprints at Mister Kane, one fist drawn back, face bloody and wild.  Mister Kane catches his fist out of the air, twists back and down, forces the man to his knees.

“ _I’ll deal with you_ later,” he snarls, and the man has a second to struggle before Mister Kane moves like a striking snake and slams a knee into the prisoner’s face.  He crumples to the ground, limp--Mister Kane doesn’t even watch him fall. “I gave a _direct order,_ and I expect--”

Chilton _screams_.

It’s an awful sound, and even Mister Kane jumps, whips around and stares as Chilton claws at his head, thrashing on the ground, jerking in fast, awful spasms, faster and faster and harder--

“Negate command!” Mister Kane snaps, and for a second he sounds something very close to _scared_ , tight and sharp and urgent.  “Cancel executive override!”

Chilton gasps in air and goes limp, shaking all over, wheezing for breath.  Mister Kane starts toward him, walking fast--catches himself, whatever strange urgency he was letting himself show.  Slows down, coming to a cautious halt a few feet from Chilton’s shaking body, and then turns back, teeth bared and eyes wild and snarls “ _Get out!_ ”

The techs scatter.  Most of them go straight for the door, glad to leave--a few, very brave or very stupid or just horribly, self-destructively curious, slow and glance back and duck behind obstacles, hide behind holo-cloaks.  Stare.  Listen.  

“... _it doesn’t have to be this way,_ ” says Mister Kane, barely loud enough to hear, and Chilton jerks faintly, head lolling to one side.  His face is blank, exhausted and worn, and it’s impossible to tell if the wetness on his cheeks is tears or if his eyes are just watering so hard the difference is immaterial.  “Look at me, Mike.”

Chilton opens his eyes.  They’re wet and dark and so bloodshot the whites have gone deep pink, but he meets Mister Kane’s eyes fearlessly.

“I’m _,_ ” he starts voice torn ragged at the edges.  “... _kkh--_ Kane--”

“The point of this wasn’t for you to kill yourself,” Mister Kane cuts over him, still barely audible, still frighteningly quiet, almost soft.  He grabs a handful of Chilton’s uniform, drags him upright and pushes him back against one of the obstacle course pillars, looking him over.  “...You were my best and brightest, the--” he cuts himself off, shakes his head, then keeps going, stronger.  The strange undercurrent to his voice is more than that, now; tight and soft and furious and pained.  If he wasn’t judge, jury and executioner, if he wasn’t CEO, if he wasn’t _Abraham Kane,_ he could almost be pleading. “Do you think I enjoy doing this to you?  All I want from you--”

“ _Murder,_ ”  Chilton cuts over him, then has to stop, cough and wheeze for air.  A trickle of blood runs down his chin--his lip is swelling, bitten almost through as he struggled against the override.  “...’m not a...c-can’t make me...k-kill for you.   _Won’t._  I won’t.  ‘M not you.  Not a monster.  I _won’t._ ”

Mister Kane is silent for a long, long moment.   And then he stands, straightens his back, folds his hands behind him.  His hands are clenched together so hard the knuckles are white.

“...You could have ruled this city,” he says, but it’s cold now, distant and impartial.  “Everything I had would have been yours, Chilton.  But if you won’t serve Deluxe willingly, I’ll have to make you useful by other means.”

“ _You’ll have to...kill me_ ,” Chilton rasps, and then makes a croaky noise of shock as Mister Kane lifts him again, almost off his feet this time, onto trembling legs that barely hold his weight.

“No,” says Mister Kane.  “I won’t.  Override Omega.”

“Acknowledged,” says Chilton, and his voice is weak and thready, agonized with defeat.  “...Standing by for orders.”

“Return the prisoner to his detainment pod and then report to the reprogramming chamber,” Mister Kane says, and Chilton spasms again.  “You’ll stay there until your next mission.”

“Yes, Commander,” says Chilton, and for just a second his voice shakes and his eyes are wide and he looks like--like a scared teenage boy.  Kane looks at him for one last, long second, and then turns away and waves a hand.

“Dismissed.”

\--

Deluxe has a new weapon.

That’s what some people are saying.  The rest of Motorcity is pretty sure he’s a myth, or an overblown rumor, or just a terrorist from Deluxe with a hell of a dramatic flare.  Nobody seems to have seen him personally; it’s always a friend of a friend who saw him appear in the middle of a downtown street, like a ghost in Deluxe white and blue.  An aunt’s girlfriend who saw him dodge everything the Duke’s guards could throw at him.  A drinking buddy’s brother who saw him march into the Cabler’s settlement and tell them this was their final chance to leave Kane’s property before Kane wiped out them and everything they ever loved.

...then, the popular story goes, he looked around the room with glowing eyes, grabbed a cable as big around as his head and ripped it apart with his bare hands.  That’s the story, anyway.

It’s not just neutral parties like the Cablers.  Apparently the Ambassador was seen near the Duke’s mansion, and no one knows quite what went down because the Duke’s not chatty on the subject, but one of his limos was in flames by the end of it.

Somebody starts calling him Kane’s Ambassador after that.  It figures that dark rumors, open threats and shows of force are what passes for diplomacy, from Kane.  Every account is consistent; he wears Deluxe’s colors, he claims to speak for Kane, he recites the same propaganda bullcrap as Kane’s infrequent broadcasts to the undercity.  If he exists, he’s Kane Co. through and through.  So honestly, it’s surprising that he hasn’t gone any further than he has.  He’s broken property, wrecked buildings, delivered plenty of threats, but he’s never killed. The injuries he’s dealt out have never been fatal.

By all reports, the Ambassador looks like an ordinary young man, shaggy brown hair and olive skin, the only visible difference being the eerie green and gold glow of his eyes. He looks so normal and human it makes some of his exploits even creepier, like the story about the time a sniper almost caught him off-guard.  He’d spun around as the shot sounded, raised an arm in front of him and blocked the explosion with his bare hands, showing no signs of pain as the blood trickled down his torn, scorched skin. Most of the people who claim to have seen him are adamant that he doesn't flinch when he's hurt, and there's a widespread theory that he's not actually a human modded up to the gills--he’s an android of some kind, built to look human but surpass them in every possible way.  The latest weapon in Kane’s relentless war on Motorcity, incapable of feeling or thinking beyond the hate Kane Co. programmed him with.

Opinion is split on whether this would make him _more_ or _less_ creepy.  As time passes and more and more stories of his inhumanity spread, the robot theory gains more and more headway.  No human would deliver Kane’s threats so impassively, fight with that kind of perfect grace or take hits as unflinchingly.

And today, for the first time, all of that is on video.

The Motorcity intranet is buzzing with it.  The video is circulating like wildfire; a lean, almost gangly humanoid shape standing in the middle of one of the midtown bridges.  One of the few cars trying to make its way across the bridge skids to a halt in front of him as he stands there, motionless; pedestrians are backing away or flat-out running. (Except for a few. There are always a few).  

One of the people watching is either brave enough or dumb enough to jump out of his car and run at the shadowy figure in the middle of the bridge; in the video, his distant figure swings a crowbar at the Ambassador’s head, there’s a second and a half of frenzied movement, and then the dust settles and the Ambassador has him on the ground.  He pulls the crowbar from his attacker’s slackened grip, takes it in both hands and _bends_ it into a hairpin twist.  Then he throws it over the side of the bridge, picks the guy up by his collar, and throws him back into the driver’s seat of his car.

And here's the thing: when the Ambassador’s fighting, he moves like a dancer, strikes like a whip, every motion easy and fluid. As soon as he stops fighting--like when he pushes the man into his car, towards easy escape, and turns away--there's something wrong with his limbs, a stutter and catch like his joints or muscle impulses aren't working smoothly anymore. Or like he's glitching. Like he's only optimized for combat.

He looks around the quickly-emptying bridge. The man who attacked him shakes his head dizzily and drives off, and the only person left is a woman with a long black braid and a blue holoscreen open, recording as much of the incident as she can get. The Ambassador takes a juddering step towards her and jerks his thumb towards the nearer end of the bridge. (He used to talk, deliver Kane’s ultimatums in a hoarse, soft monotone--now he’s mostly silent except for strange, choked noises.) His hands are twitching and shaking. She nods hastily and starts walking that way, twisting at the waist to keep her screen pointed at him. The Ambassador shakes his head hard, staggers and strides toward her, head lowered, steps hitching enough that it looks almost like he's limping. The woman holds out until he's a few steps away, then drops her screen and breaks into a run.

He stops, staggering again, and lets her go.

She gets off the bridge and turns, gets her screen up, starts recording again. She gets it all on video; the white and blue figure suddenly diving off the bridge, the thundering explosion behind him, flames and smoke billowing as debris flies from the middle of the bridge--the recording shakes and rapidly pulls back as she scrambles to a safer distance--the protesting groans and creaks as metal and concrete twists and gives way. The figure landing in a roll on the hard ground below, coming back to its feet, vanishing in the darkness.

(The broken bridge is on Amazon territory, and Foxy is none too pleased, but there’s nobody to blame and nobody to punish for it but the single shadowy figure that’s long-gone into the dark.)

The thing is, anyone watching that recording can't argue with the evidence: the Ambassador came to destroy that bridge. He could easily have planted that explosive and jumped to safety _without_ chasing everyone off the bridge first, but he waited until every last person was at a safe distance. Why? Kane didn't suddenly start caring about innocent Motorcitizens, surely. And a robot’s got no reason to care. (He has to be a robot, the way he was faltering and twitching.  The number of mods it would take to make him that strong, that fast, that unflinchingly resilient...even for Kane Co., that would be a huge investment.  They wouldn't let him fall into that kind of bad repair.  Even Kane wouldn't be that wasteful of his resources.)

\--

Kane backhands him.

Mike doesn’t feel it, but the action translates to his programming as disapproval anyway, and it forces a jolt of remorse on him.  Mike weathers it out.  Stands at attention, unmoved, and lets it roll away from him because he’s not sorry.  He’s _not_.  And if Kane is frustrated, great.  Join the club.

“Defective!”  Kane snarls, and Mike blinks slowly as the protocol kicks in and forces another wave of programmed shame and guilt through his exhausted brain.  It’s almost nice to feel something clear and pre-programmed again, something that overwhelms the howling storm in his head for a second.  “All the resources we poured into you--”  He stops, glares at Mike’s blank face.  “...permission granted to speak freely, Special Unit.”

Mike finds control for a second.  Flicks his eyes to Kane’s face and deliberately keeps his mouth shut.  

Kane clenches his fists like he wants to punch Mike again--Mike hopes he does.  Hopes he breaks his hand.  But instead he folds his hands and paces, taking sharp, furious steps.  “You were so promising,” he says.  “You had all the potential in the world, and on your first real test--”

“Mass--mass--mass--”  Mike’s brain spins out of control for a second--he forces his mouth to stop, starts again.  “...Mass murder isn’t a test.”  And then, stitched unwillingly onto the end, an involuntary tic, “...Commander.”

“You ungrateful _child,_ ” Kane sneers, and the disdain still stings, no matter how much Mike tries to ignore it.  “What do you think you’re going to achieve with this, Mike?  Shirking your duties, breaking your oath--”

“You--lied.  To me.”  Words are almost impossible, every spark of outside stimulation sends a cascade of glitches and clashing programs through his skull, but it’s vital that Kane knows, that Mike makes this _clear._  “I’m.   _Never_.  Going to.  Orders.  Never gonna follow...your orders.”

Kane looks at him for a long minute, silent and cold with fury, eyes burning as they flicker over Mike's bruised face and battered knuckles.  Then, finally, he shakes his head.

“...Then you’re a liability,” he says.  “And Kane Co. has no further use for you.”

That’s...new.  Mike feels a bolt of tired, burning adrenaline rush up his spine--he can’t move, hasn’t been ordered to, but under all the programming and all the exhaustion, some part of him is still ready to fight until his last breath.  “...what,” he says.  “...You--tired?  Already?  M’ just...getting started.   _Commander."_

Kane looks at him.  Just looks.

“I’m sending you to Motorcity,” he says, almost pleasantly.  “Since you like it so much down there, it’s only fitting you spend your last hours there.  So _go._ ” He jabs a finger at Mike’s chest.  Mike doesn’t feel it.  “This is an order under _executive override,_ Special Unit.  Go down there.  Kill anyone, _everyone_ who gets in your way.  Purge that sad, filthy excuse for a city.”

“No,” says Mike.  “Acknowledged.   _No._ ”

“Drop Special Unit Chilton in the middle of the city,” Kane says to his comm, and on the other end of the connection somebody says “ _Yes sir_ ” as Mike’s whole body starts to shake.  “He’ll wipe out hundreds of those pieces of filth before they bring him down.  It’s what he was made for.”

\--

Mike fights the override every second of the trip down to Motorcity, but even when he manages to jerk an arm or a leg away from the control protocols’ iron grip for a second, he can’t go anywhere.  The Security officers who marched in to take him down to Motorcity cuffed his hands behind his back, wary but not fearful, not hesitating to shove him around as his body jerks and shudders, fighting the overrides and glitches.  

His chronometric function is still broken, his right eye is dim and blurry at the edges and his left one flickers sometimes--it’s hard to tell how long the trip down takes.  Mike slams against his programming so hard at one point he blacks out, comes to trembling and doubled over on the ground.  He’s on the on the on his knees--the Ultra-Elites haven’t moved to help him up.  His legs his legs his legs legs legs legs legs support won’t support his weight his

The guard closest to him snaps out an order that Mike barely registers.  His body shudders, and answers, and climbs to his feet.  He knows his hands, cuffed behind his back, they’re cuffed, but he can’t stop trying to reach out, catch his balance, but his hands, they’re cuffed, behind his back.  

The pod shimmers around them, darkens, fades into anonymous dark gray-green as it swoops down toward the lights, the city, the people.  Mike stares at them, bleary from the desperate war inside his skull; he has a mission he has a mission.  He hates the mission.  He won’t, he can’t do what he has to do.  He won’t.  He can’t.  He has to.  He _won’t._  

The pod lands.  The Ultra-Elites shove Mike out of the pod.  Pull the cuffs off his, his wrists.  Free.  The override stops trying to paralyze him.  Mike staggers forward instead, one step at a time, confused and angry and still trying to remember what his mission--

Mike staggers out into the road, and then immediately regrets it.  There are people _everywhere,_ and they’re not wearing Deluxe colors and that makes them enemies.  His brain accounts for every face on the street instantaneously, men and women and children, locking onto them.  His brain counts nineteen people.  His brain estimates a minute and a half minimum for total extermination.

They’re so _slow,_ all of them, Mike has been fighting his programming for two whole agonizingly long seconds by the time people start to turn and look at him.  Mike feels that glitch again, his heart double-beats as he forces his hands down to his sides.  The nearest person to him is a little girl.  She’s just a little girl just a just _enemies of Deluxe_ no,  _she’s just a little girl no no no NO--_

 _“GET OUT OF HERE!”_ he yells, and staggers, almost blacking out, as the disciplinary response stabs up his spine and through his skull.  He’s not supposed to warn them, _kill anyone who gets in your way_ , disciplinary action will follow.  The girl’s father yells and snatches her up, backing away as Mike loses control and swipes out a fist, almost hitting her.  “RUN!”

He has to hit something, he has to hit her, _terminate enemies of Deluxe_ , he has to fight.  Mike draws back a reinforced fist, feels the polymer and steel of his muscles tense as he pulls back an arm and then slams it into a lamp-post with all his strength.  The metal breaks like wet wood.  More people scream as it comes down, sparking and spitting and shattering, and the noise rings through Mike’s skull even though he knows he’s the one who caused it-- _DANGER DANGER DANGER THREAT THREAT IMMINENT ASSAULT DANGER_ \--

“RUN!”

They do.  They _scurry like rats, Motorcity filth terminate for Kane Co. enemies of Deluxe he’ll kill hundreds of them it’s what he was made for--_ they run from him, pulling children behind them, guiding old men and women, locking doors behind them, vanishing out of sight.  

 _Threats neutralized,_ says Mike’s stupid, broken brain.   _Locating new targets._

Mike’s hand is bleeding.  The surface tissue that impacted with the metal is bruised and torn.  He doesn’t feel the pain.  If he stares at his bloody hand long enough, he feels a twinge of something--heat, or maybe cold--but that feels like a glitch from his brain; fake, wishful thinking, in error.   _Glitch_.

Mike looks up.  Looks around.  The streets are...empty.  Something in the corner of his eye, maybe a face in a window, but when he turns fast his eyes flicker.  He loses _the target, eliminate._  He can’t see anybody.

Mike walks.

He doesn’t know how long he walks for--it’s probably not an hour, but it might be days, even though--if it was days, if it was was was if he walked for days somebody.  Would have shot at him.  Minutes, then.  

There’s nobody to hurt.   _Enemies of Deluxe,_ Mike thinks, and for a second, inane and terrible and wonderful, _like me.  Enemy of Deluxe._  Doubles over as the disciplinary protocol rakes across his nerves for that thought.  Keeps walking.  Keeps walking.

_New target acquired._

“No,” says Mike out loud, but his programming is cutting back in again and the word strangles off in the middle as his voice shuts down.   _No, I don’t want to._

New target.  Where?

There’s a boy standing at the end of the road.  There’s a car behind him, an automotive vehicle, _huge,_ wheels wider around than Mike is tall, with a skinny figure just barely visible in the driver’s seat.  The boy turns and says something as Mike tries to keep himself still, and the car lets out a roar and takes off, eating up ground, vanishing into the dark.

The boy walks forward, slow, hands held up.  Mike’s programming jitters.  Not sure.  Threat, Motorcity is one huge threat and this boy is a threat _ASSAULT IMMINENT_ but he’s got his hands up, no weapons.  He’s not holding any weapons, and he’s tall but too thin to do any damage.  Not to an augmented Deluxian combat unit, not to-- _Mike,_ he couldn’t hurt Mike.  

As the boy comes forward he reaches down to his chest and touches something--Mike goes tense all over, jerking and ready to fight, but the touch just makes the boy shimmer.  His strange, dark Motorcity clothes flicker and then he’s wearing Deluxe colors.  Familiar white and blue, permitted and orderly and _no no no no no no no no_

“...Mike?”

He knows the unit’s designation.  Mike stares at him blearily for a second, fists half-raised, and then seizes all over.  His eyes are cutting out again, leaving his visual feed dark and utterly blank _OPEN TO ATTACK ASSAULT IMMINENT DANGER DANGER_ leaving him in the _dark_ and if they put him in reprogramming again he’s going to die, if they lock him up in the dark and shut off his body and leave his brain awake to split open and sift through and twist around until it breaks he’s going to _die--_

“Mike!  Oh my god, it is, it’s seriously you--Mike, it’s me!”

Mike knows, knows knows knows know him.  Can’t remember.  It was important, but his programming won’t let it through.  Nothing is important except the mission, he _can’t._

“ _God,_ ” says the boy--the hostile--the civilian, quiet like he’s talking to himself.  He raises his voice again, not like Kane when he’s angry, higher-pitched and almost scared.  “Mike, _listen_ , look at me, I’m not a threat!   Uh—uh, _disengage combat protocol, unarmed civilian target!_  Bro, you look--” for a second he stops, goes on lower and rougher, strange-sounding.  “...I wanna--j-just wanna help you.  Disengage combat protocol.   _Disengage.”_

Some of the awful screaming in Mike’s skull fades a little bit.  He feels his brain kick sluggishly back into gear, bringing his eyes back online and then his breathing protocol--didn’t notice that cutting out.  Unarmed civilian.  Deluxian civilian, blue and white and blue and unarmed.  Familiar face.  Blonde hair, broad shoulders that aren’t all the way filled out with wiry muscle.  Through his hair ( _too long not regulation report to personnel services)_ his eyes are blue-grey-green, wide and scared and fixed on Mike’s face.

“Mike,” says the civilian again.  He’s close, now.  Arm’s reach.  Freckles, bright eyes, blond hair.  Familiar input, _familiar…_ “Hey.  Hey, look at me.   _Mikey._  It’s me.”

Chuck.

It’s Chuck!  It’s Chuck, Mike knows Chuck, Mike’s best friend.  Chuck, he’s not up in Deluxe, he’s down here, talking to Mike.  He’s right here.  Chuck’s smart, he’ll know, he’ll fix the-- _yelling,_ the screaming in Mike’s head, everything crashing and sparking together--

“Chuck,” says Mike, hoarse with relief.  “ _Help._ ”  It hurts, everything keeps _IMMINENT ASSAULT_ slamming together, pushing at him inside his head.  “Chuck I’m--hurt you.”

“No you won’t,” says Chuck.  He’s touching Mike’s wrist.  Mike can’t feel it.  “What did they do to you?  Oh, Mikey, bro, what did they do--I’m unarmed.  Confirm.”

Vocal cutoff is overridden for direct orders.  Just for this one moment, he doesn’t have to fight to get the words out, and the relief is overwhelming.  Mike takes a gasping breath.  “ _Confirm, unarmed civilian._  Chuck.”

“That’s me.  Good, dude, that’s right.”  Chuck says, and then Mike tries to step towards him, tries to attack him, tries to run away, tries to talk, _tries_ to do too much all at once, and his whole system cuts out.

Mike comes to on the ground.  He fell forward; his face is bleeding, he hit his head above one eye and _no structural damage reported_ it’s nothing vital but his skin is torn and there’s blood in his eye.  Mike’s body tries to blink.  A glitch sends him spasming and shuddering, slamming against the ground.  A hundred jolting error messages.

“I can fix this,” Chuck is saying overhead, and Mike gets burning eyes open and catches a bleary glimpse of glowing blue—Chuck’s eyes, shining through the curtain of his hair in the dark.  Bright and inhuman, Kane Co. blue.  “I can fix this, come on come on come _on--_ Mike, hang on, okay?  God.   _Shit._  I’m gonna help you.  Initiate maintenance protocol.”

Mike pushes, lashes out at the orders crowding around him.  “ _Protocol not found_ please _…”_

“Not--?”  Chuck stops, makes some noises in the back of his throat, starts again.  “Okay!  Yeah, okay, so...so they didn’t think that whole subheading under _vital components_ was important enough to--okay!  Fine!  Great, sure!  Uh...s-stand down!  Wait for further orders!”

Oh.

Oh, that doesn’t take it away, but it helps just a little.  Mike’s hands unclench at his sides, and the targeting system behind his eyes finally flickers and fades.  

“I’m gonna have to do a little bit at a time,”  Chuck tells him--not really him, he’s not saying it to [unit] to [ _error no designation found reboot_ ] to--to--to [ _reboot_ ]--to [unit] to _Mike_ , but Mike listens anyway, clings to the familiar voice.  “I c-can’t—he put too much in, I can’t just shut it all down in one—”

“ _‘S okay,_ ” Mike gets out, rasping and breathless, “Please buddy just fix—just make it— _nnh_ make it _stop_.. _._ ”

“I will.”  Chuck takes a couple of deep breaths.  “I will, I’ll fix it, I promise I’ll fix it.  Okay?  Uh— _shhh_ , you’re gonna be okay.  Here—”

_Hands, grip pull hold threat THREAT—_

“Nnn _nhh!_ ” Mike says, and thrashes as Chuck pulls him closer, resting Mike’s weight on Chuck’s lap.  Chuck groans and shushes him again, lets go of his arms and desperately pets his hair instead.  That’s not a threat.  Not a threat, that’s okay _enemies of Deluxe must—_

“I’m going to start a deep scan,” Chuck says, like he’s far away and too close at the same time, all echoing-loud.  “ _Try to relax, Mikey._ ”

Mike feels it the second Chuck uplinks to his brain.  Feels it like a touch, like standing in an empty room and suddenly knowing there’s somebody behind him.  He fights it on instinct; throws out his hands to push away a touch that isn’t there, pushes with his mind in a blind attempt to close out that too-intimate sense of _contact_.

“No, _shhhh,_ Mike—Mikey, you’re okay _—_ ” the hand on his hair is on his face now, petting his cheek, his sweaty forehead, holding his head as it snaps back and forth like he can throw off the invasion by shaking it loose.  “I’m gonna patch over your combat protocol for a second, just—just for a second, holy crap what did he do to you—I promise, you’ll feel better in a second.  Okay? _”_

Something in his mind…shifts.  Mike blinks, and some of the wild urge to fight fades, just a little.  The need to hit something, to lash out, is gone.  The panic and helpless, spiraling rage are still there though, and he jerks again as Chuck’s brain nudges at his, reaching out.  Chuck closes his eyes, nose wrinkling, frowning, then hisses through his teeth like he’s frustrated and the hand on Mike’s face shifts and opens up a glowing green data-screen.

It’s like a switch flipping.  The light falls across Mike’s face and all of a sudden _Yes sir of course sir ready for orders Mister Kane_ he’s back in a tiny, dark box, in the lab, on the table, tied down and overridden, chest split open and screens hovering over him, watching them press the keys to speed up his breath, to tense his muscles out of his control, to _stop his heart—_

“Okay!”  Chuck’s voice breaks and his hands pull away, taking the screen with them.  Mike scrambles away from him on arms and legs that shake; they give out from under him.  He drops face-down in the dirt, gasping, clutching at his chest where they opened him up.  There’s a scope behind his eyes, jittering across the broken ground around him, searching for a target.  Mike _hates_ it, hates it so much he wants to tear at himself until it’s gone, until his brain stops screaming _THREAT THREAT INVASION THREAT_ at every touch and every motion.  

His skin is closed.  No gaping wound.  No tests.  

“Okay,” Chuck says again, soft and choked, and his hands are on Mike’s back, petting it in nervous, too-fast circles, trembling almost as bad as Chuck’s voice.  “Okay, no screens.  I promise, no more screens.   _God,_ Mikey—sorry, sorry—can I keep trying?  Please, I wanna help.  Let me help you out, bro.  Confirm, unarmed civilian.  No threat.  Confirm.”

“ _Un...armed civilian…_ ” Mike mumbles, and doubles over on himself, shaking.  “ _No threat.  No threat.  No threat.  Confirm, no threat._ ”

“Good.”  Chuck’s hands are broad and warm and clumsy on his back, petting his tense shoulders.  “You’re doing so good for me, dude.  Can I keep working?  Uh--confirm or deny.”

The words unlock a door.  Mike takes control of his mouth for a second, relishing the feeling of words without painful effort.  Gasps out, “ _Confirm._ ” and then before the orders can snap down on him again, “--fix me--”

“Try to relax for me, bro.”

Mike tries.  Chuck doesn’t try to hold him at first, just lets him lie there on the ground on his stomach, breathing.  Chuck’s big, warm, knuckly hands rest on his back, twitching and tapping as he mumbles to himself, and slowly things come untangled.  Mike stops jerking out of his control, stops struggling and pushing Chuck’s hands away when they pet his hair or his shoulders or frame his face, wiping away icy sweat that Mike only feels in glitches and flashes.  Slowly, he goes still and lets Chuck pull him over again, going limp in his best friend’s grip, letting himself stop fighting.

“They sent you down here for something,” says Chuck, and his fingers trace absently past Mike’s cheekbone, over and over again.  Mike can barely feel it.  Chuck’s talking, half to himself and half to Mike, talking to himself like he used to, like he used to when--when--when--when--  “...they wanted you to do something--you’ve got two orders conflicting, he didn’t bother to cancel--oh man, how did you even make it down here, jeez.  Let me just…there. No more mission.”

Something untwists inside Mike’s skull, a weight he didn’t know he was carrying eases off.  He hears himself make a distant noise--a broken, wordless sound, gratitude and relief and pleading--and Chuck hums and brushes his hair back, mumbling comforting nonsense.

“Good job, dude, keep breathing.  You’re doing great.  I’m gonna try to fix what he did to your sensory feed, okay?  Close your eyes for me.”

Of course, anything, whatever he wants.  Mike closes his eyes, dropping his head to one side to press the side of his face against Chuck’s belly.  He can’t tell what it feels like, but some part of him knows distantly that it’s good.  Mike forgot there was anything to feel except _bad_ and _processing error, sensation.pr not found,_ but Chuck feels good.  Closing his eyes feels really good.  Mike’s brain still feels too full and too loud, so he focuses on that; Chuck’s hands on his skin, the way his chest moves when he breathes.  Feeling something good again.

“... _I’m rebooting your eyes,_ ” Chuck murmurs to him as he works--the darkness behind Mike’s eyes goes a little bit darker, deepening, and then fades back in again.  “Okay.  Ears now.  I’m still gonna be here, you just won’t hear me for a second.  Here, just--”

One of his hands slides down and Mike feels a buzz of errors and alerts as something touches his arm, his hand.  Chuck squeezes his hand once, tight, and then laces their fingers together and holds on as all the sound abruptly drops away.  It’s the same as when Kane restricted Mike to the Executive frequency--there’s no muffled heartbeat, no sound of his own breathing, nothing.  Mike squeezes Chuck’s hand and forces himself not to struggle, trembling all over.

“-- _d, good,_ good job.  I don’t think he did anything to your taste and smell, but I’ll do those too.  Mike, you with me?”

“ _Mmmh,_ ” Mike mumbles, blurry with exhaustion.  It’s so hard to focus, to pull his thoughts together into some kind of order, and making his mouth move to get words out is almost impossible.  “... _please…_ ”

“The patches are still there, but I can reboot the entire function and we can work on the patches later.”

Mike does something kind of like a nod.  “... _nnnh_.”

“I know, bro,” says Chuck, and the stinging buzz of sensation leaves his hand and moves to his face instead.  A touch on his cheek.  With his eyes closed he can’t tell if it’s a palm or Chuck’s fingertips again, touching him almost too lightly.  “Take a deep breath and hold it for a second?”

Mike follows orders. He didn’t know he was tasting anything, but a sense of _bitter-metal-grit-chemical_ cuts out and then fades back in, clearer and less muddled.  Blood.  He’s tasting blood.

“Oh,” Chuck is saying overhead, distracted.  “Hm.  Uh…”

That doesn’t sound good.

“Wh’s wrong,” says Mike, and tries to figure out how to spit out the heavy taste of his own blood.  Only about half of the muscles do what he wants--he manages to roll part of the way onto his side and feels whatever is bleeding in his mouth trickle blood down his cheek and chin.

“Whoa, what--oh.”  Chuck’s hand touches his face again.  “Okay.  Ohhhkay, okay, don’t freak out.  You just cut yourself when you fell over, that’s all.”

“... _mmmnot freakin’ out,_ ” Mike slurs.  “What’s...wrong.”

“I just…” Chuck glances down.  Mike does too; the hand Mike used to punch the streetlight is bloody and bruised.  “I was gonna reboot your sense of touch, but it looks like he tried to shut off your pain sensors and...and it could be...intense.”

 _Touch._  Feeling, actually _feeling_ something?  

“Yes,” says Mike.  “Please.”

“But--Mikey…”

“ _Please._ ”

“...Fine.”  Chuck doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t stop touching Mike either.  Pulls Mike back over into his lap and props Mike’s head up.  “Look at me, okay?  This one is going to take longer, it’s seriously messed up.  And you’re not gonna feel anything, so...look at me.  I’ll be right here.”  His voice is shaking.  Mike tries to smile reassuringly, and tastes more blood.

“Okay,” says Chuck, and his eyes light up blue.  “...let’s do this.”

It’s worse than he thought it would be.  Mike can still taste the blood, still hear Chuck’s voice, still see him, but everything else is utterly numb.  It’s like not having a body at all.  Mike tries to pick up his hand and look at it, and it jerks up way faster than he meant it to and almost hits Chuck in the side.  Chuck goes “Whoa, _whoa!_ Easy, dude, shhhh…” and Mike hears the sound but doesn’t understand how.  He can’t feel his breath in his throat, can’t feel the imperceptible hum of sound in his ears, can’t tell if his body is moving or not.  For almost five minutes, Mike lies there and stares up at the distant ceiling of Motorcity, and feels nothing at all.

And then, slowly, it comes back.

Touch is still a confusing mess of altered signals and conflicting messages, but it’s _there_ now.  Some of the error messages are gone, leaving behind the muted knowledge of contact.  Pressure. Shifting touch.  And a feeling that’s...urgent, and not good, but clear enough Mike groans out loud just because he _feels_ it.  

“I know it hurts,” Chuck says, and Mike flexes his hand and feels something in his chest knot up, tight and hot and agonizing.   _Hurts._  Something _hurts_ again.  “Sorry dude, sorry.”

“ _Good,_ ” Mike says.  “You’re good, it’s--good.  Hurts.  Feel it.  ‘S good.”

“Huh?”

“I.   _Feel_ it,” Mike repeats, with effort, trying to make his voice clearer.  “Feel, now.  Missed that.  Heh.”  And that’s just about all he has energy for right now.  Mike slumps back, resting his weight on Chuck, letting his eyes fall shut.  “... _don’t stop…?_ ”

\--

Chuck is flipping his shit.

Partially because _holy crap it’s Mike.  It’s_ Mike!! Chuck thought he was never going to see him again, after Kane pulled Chuck from the program.  Mike was behind every possible layer of security and then he was just _gone,_ and then he was back but only as an urban myth, and then he was right there in front of Chuck but... _empty,_ somehow, all jittering eyes and jerking hands, shaking so hard he could barely walk.  He’s got bruises and scrapes and cuts all over him, he was staggering and barely upright--but for just a second he still looked like the most dangerous thing Chuck had ever seen.  

And now here he is, laid out in Chuck’s lap, shivering all over, eyes trustingly closed, pressing up against Chuck like a scared little kid.  It’s terrifying, but at the same time it’s just so good to see him again, and to know that he _didn’t_ want to do what he was doing.  To see how hard they had to push him to force him to do Kane’s dirty work.

And holy shit, did they push hard.

“Open patch directory _,_ ” Chuck says, and stares at the information popping up behind his eyes.  What should be an orderly list of _maybe_ four or five bug fixes is a messy, overlapping patchwork of “fixes” and “improvements”.  Some of them are cryptic--chains of text and numbers he can’t even identify.  Some of them are straightforward, but no less disturbing when he opens them to look at-- _sleep-optimizer,_ says the first one he selects-- _default settings: sleep_time=3 hr, content=content; randomized._ Under the “content” subheading, there are video files.  Simulations, _propaganda,_ Kane couldn’t even let him sleep without pushing his bullshit every second of every dream.

 _DELETE,_ Chuck thinks fiercely, and then winces as the program blares back at him, “ _NOT AUTHORIZED”._  Okay.   _Override._

 _Authorization Level: Registration Holder_ and wrapped in and around “registration holder”, _Kane Corporation, Commander-In-Chief Abraham Kane_ \--

Mike shudders like he can feel that name echoing around his head.  Chuck hastily stops poking at that.

“...Mike?”

It takes him a minute to respond--he rolls his head a little, squinting, blinking his eyes blearily open.  “... _mmm…_ ”

“I can take you away from--I can--get rid of Kane’s registration ownership, but the space has to be filled with something, they built it so you had to have an...owner.”

“ _Please,_ ” Mike says, fierce and immediate.  

“I will, I will, I just--somebody has to be your--”

“Chuck,” says Mike, and his hand jerks up, clumsy and shaking, and closes around Chuck’s fingers.  “ _Please._ ”

Oh.   _Oh._  God.

“Are...are you sure?”

Mike drops back, like he’s not strong enough to stay sitting up.  Nods, slow and trembling, and gives Chuck this--really awful, just utterly _heartbreaking_ smile, all tired and hurting and…

“... _Okay,_ ” says Chuck, and clears his throat sharply.  The lump in his throat doesn’t ease at all.  When he lays a hand on Mike’s face, Mike’s smile softens and his eyes fall closed again.  “Okay, bro _._ You got it.  I’m going to have to override you to fix some of this, to cancel what he--”

“ _...omega,_ ” Mike rasps, _immediately_ , like he doesn’t even have to think about it, and saying the word makes him tense but he doesn’t pull away from the hand on his cheek.  “Override...Omega.  But, just…”

“I swear I won’t use it unless I have to,” Chuck reassures him, and Mike relaxes again.  “I...if it helps, my master code is just, uh…’override zero’.  So.  If you need it or something...”

“You’ve got…” Mike’s eyes open again, and a spark of something dark and furious flares behind them.  All of a sudden he’s tensing, trying to push himself up.  “Kane used--he made you--?”

“Shhh, _shh_.  Mikey, don’t even worry about me right now.”

Mike settles back, grudgingly.  His eyes have the same kind of inhuman glow behind them as Chuck’s, when Chuck is messing around in his programming--Mike’s glow is green with little points of bright yellow-gold.

“We’ll fix this,” Chuck promises him.  “I’ll fix it.”  Even if looking at the sheer amount of _fucked up_ Kane has thrown in there is as daunting as looking at a mountain he needs to climb.  “I’ll get you away from him, just...relax.  Whatever...prompts or whatever, if it tells you to say something, just let it happen, okay?”

“If I try to hurt--”

“Well, if it tells you to strangle me you should probably not do that,” Chuck allows, and it’s meant to be a joke but Mike shudders.  “I’m not exactly helpless, Mike, I’ll...deal with it.”

“ _If I try to hurt you_ ,” Mike repeats, sharper this time, “--override me?”

God.

“...I don’t want to hurt--”

“Chuck, _please._ ”

“...Okay.”  That’s not scary at all, the idea of having total control over your best friend’s mind and body is definitely not paralyzingly terrifying or anything.  Whatever helps him, though.  Whatever Mike wants, that’s the most important thing.  Chuck takes a very deep breath.  “Get ready, okay?  I’ve gotta start on this, so, uh...p-priority command, override Omega.”

Even with the warning Mike spasms once, a seizure of a movement.  “Acknowledged,” he grits out, and then visibly forces himself to relax.  “...acknowledged.  S-standing by.  For orders.”

“Rollback protocol, registration holder status.”

Mike’s brows furrow faintly, like he’s trying to remember something.  “...protocol not found.”

“ _Seriously_?” Chuck drags a hand down his face.  “They didn’t give you a--okay.  Alright, I can work around that.  Uh…”  He stares into the distance for a second, and then takes a shuddering breath as a thought creeps slowly up from the back of his mind.  A loophole Kane might not have thought to close, less of a skeleton key and more of a battering ram.  

“...Mike,” he says quietly.  “I have an idea, but it might be kind of...hard on you.”

Mike nods.

“No, but--”

“ _Do it._ ”

God, okay, this is totally fine.  

“Override command,” says Chuck.  “Overwrite recall.”

Mike spasms all over, eyes snapping wide.  “Acknowledged!   _Agh--_ ”

“I know, I know, sorry--dialogue recall fabrication, voiceprint one _Abraham Kane._  Fabricate.”

Mike makes a long, shaky, confused sound, miserable and uncomprehending.  Chuck winces and keeps pushing, talking as fast as he can as Mike trembles and takes fast, panicky gasps of air.  “Dialogue fabrication, v-- _ah!_ ”  A security protocol burns past him, trying to fry the harddrive he doesn’t have--the agony lances through Chuck’s skull and he lets out a panicked half-scream of pain and then throws himself back against the firewall, fighting the pain, tearing at it until it gives way and fades.  

“Dialogue...fabrication,” he says again as soon as the ringing in his ears has faded.  His voice comes out faint and ragged now, every word is an effort.  “--Voiceprint one; ‘ _I, Abraham Kane, transfer this unit to your custody.  Do you accept custody of the unit?’_  End voiceprint one.”

Mike’s eyes blaze golden-green, wide and anguished, staring ahead into empty space.  “ _Acknowledged,_ ” he says, more air than speech, barely audible.

“Dialogue fabrication, no voiceprint; _‘I accept custody of the unit as registration holder’_.  Integrate.  End overwrite session.”

It’s like feeling a door he was throwing his weight against suddenly unlock.  Thousands of connections that were closed before spring open as Mike’s mind caves to its protocols, accepting the fabricated conversation as a real memory, the transfer of registration as a valid protocol.  Accepting new ownership.

“Lock registration holder,” says Chuck, and slumps forward over Mike, breathing hard, as Mike slurs something like _registration transfer acknowledged._  “Delete previous overwrite session.”

For a long minute, they both just stay where they are.  Chuck’s head is throbbing; Mike is making awful noises, low little gasping moans in his chest.

“... _end priority session,_ ” Chuck manages finally, and promptly passes out.

\--

Chuck wakes up in the living room in the hideout, curled up on the couch under a blanket.  There’s somebody pressed against his chest, breathing slowly.

Mike.

Chuck sits upright abruptly and then promptly keels back over, groaning, as the firewall headache comes bursting back into vivid life behind his eyes.  His whole brain feels sore and scorched.  

“... _Mike,_ ” he mumbles, and feels out around him.  His hand finds a warm shoulder and thick, soft hair.  A sharp cheekbone, a sunken, too-thin cheek.  “Mike?”

“You up?”

Chuck jumps and then sits up painfully as Jacob comes into the room, arms crossed, looking him over with tired eyes.

“What…?”  Chuck presses a hand to his forehead--Jacob obligingly brings up a screen and dims the lights to a quiet glow.  “What happened?”

“Found you passed out on the ground.”  Jacob crosses the room and presses a knobbly hand to Chuck’s forehead.  “You were burnin’ up.  Feels a little bit better now, but--geez, kid.”

“I ran into one of his firewalls.”  Chuck looks down--Mike is laid out next to him, completely still, eyes closed.  His face is thin and drawn and there are huge shadows painted under his eyes, bruised-dark.  “...is he okay?”

“About as okay as he could be right this second,” Jacob says.  “He was a cyborg, then?”

“Yeah.”  Chuck winces, remembering the shattered, glitching mess of Mike’s mind.  “Kane messed him up.  Uh...real bad.  Like, _really_ bad.”

“Then I figure he could use the sleep,” says Jacob firmly, and pushes down with the hand still on Chuck’s head.  “So could you.  Sleep off that firewall.”

“I’m okay.”

“ _Sleep._ ”

He turns the lights all the way off, ruffles up Chuck’s hair, and heads back toward the door, shaking his head as he goes.  Chuck stares after him for a second, and then looks down at Mike again.

“... _I’ll fix it,_ ” he mumbles, and scoots down carefully in the couch to lay his head on a threadbare pillow, feeling Mike breathe faintly against his shoulder.  “... _promise, bro.  I’ll…”_

The blackness behind his eyes swallows him.  Chuck sleeps.


	3. nice to meet you, kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jacob’s face softens a little bit under its craggy wrinkles. “...you’re a heck of a kid,” he says. “Anybody ever tell you that?”
> 
> “Yeah,” says Mike, fast and almost convulsive. He doesn't say the name, but he doesn't have to. Chuck winces and Jacob's eyes flick to the blue and white Kane Co. “K” on the front of Mike's jacket.

Mike dreams he’s in a defensible location with a fleet of gruntbots but no high-ground advantage and a platoon of injured soldiers to protect.

It has to be a dream, because he can move and breathe and see and never glitches.  His uniform is crooked, he's missing his badge, his hair is long again.  Mike lets himself stand there still until the last second, enjoying the way he can almost feel air filling up his lungs, how he can move without his body fighting him with every motion.  He closes his eyes and imagines he’s in Motorcity, that he’s really there--can almost smell the wet, cool air like he did before the endless overrides, the hundreds of patches.  

Pain jolts through his whole body.  He opens his eyes in the dream, looks down at himself, and sees...oh.  An enemy soldier, a motorcity thug--no, shoot, that’s how the guy is labelled but he’s just--he’s a guy, a heavyset man in ragged brown and black clothes, snarling in empty-eyed rage.  He’s got a knife buried in Mike’s chest.

Mike lets himself sink to the ground and feels the artificial pain of the simulation jolt through him again as the knife pulls free.  Pain.  God, he almost forgot how it felt, how it _actually_ felt with no glitches between his skin and his brain.  

The man slits his throat.  Mike fails the simulation.  Mike dies.

Mike dreams he’s advancing down an entrance ramp to Motorcity with a team of elites, facing down two gun turrets.  He leaves his troupe--takes off running, weaving between plasma bolts, enjoying the digital wind on his dreaming face.  His mind is blaring at him, trying to point him back toward the objective, but Mike doesn’t _want_ to go to the objective, doesn’t want to fight those turrets, he just wants--

Mike reaches out to the distant, neon-lit horizon.  A plasma bolt crackles through him, right through him like tearing fabric, and Mike fails the simulation.  Mike dies.

Mike dreams he’s tied up in a dirty room, under a single light. His troops are hiding somewhere in Motorcity and if they’re found the mission will have failed, and oh, Mike knows this one.  He’s ready when somebody hits him, a jolt of pre-programmed pain that bypasses his body’s glitching nerves and goes straight to his brain.  Somebody hits him.  Demands to know where the others are hidden.

 _Have you ever driven a car?_  Mike asks him, wistful and distant, and closes his eyes and breathes out before they hit him again.   _Do you guys really not have a curfew down here?_ There’s no getting free in this one, but they don’t kill him yet, and they’re not creative.   _If you show me the outside, I’ll tell you whatever you want, I don’t care._ They threaten, they say they’re going to do...some pretty awful stuff, they tell him what they’re going to do, but they just punch him, and Mike can handle that.  They never follow through.  The dream tries to force fear and horror into him at the things they’re saying--he breathes through it, focuses on the memory-dream-feeling of his lungs filling slow and smooth.  On the way he can fold his fingers together, stretch his legs. On having a body that’s his again.

Eventually, they bring in a tech expert.  They’re reaching into his head for information, and Mike knows he has to _activate termination code, ACTIVATE TERMINATION CODE, CLASSIFIED INFORMATION MUST BE--_

Mike closes his eyes, lets them take what they want.  Hopes they kick fake digital Kane’s butt with it as one of the dream interrogators says “We’ve got what we want.  Get rid of it.” and somebody cocks a gun.  Mike fails the simulation.  Mike dies.

Mike dreams, and steals a car, and they must have known he would when they coded this one because every time he takes his chance and runs and no matter what he does, the fuel tank always blows.  But for a minute he’s driving, _flying_ \--he fails the simulation.  He dies.  

Mike dreams, and _feels_ until he can’t feel any more, until he fails Kane Co. and his mind kills him for it and resets him to zero.  He runs and fights and falls and takes hits and _lives_ , and it’s so worth it.  They used to be nightmares, but now they’re something to hold onto.

Mike dreams, and runs, and fails the simulation, and dies, and Mike dreams, and--

Mike wakes up in the reprogramming chamber.

Mike wakes up with a ragged, desperate scream, jerks at the straps, throws his hands out to pound on unforgiving polymer walls.  Fights the override that’s holding him frozen, paralyzing him in the tiny, endless, stifling void--motionless, barely breathing, staring straight ahead and trying to scream as the black silence _crushes_ him--

“Mike!  Mikey, whoa, hey hey hey--!”

There are hands on him and Mike thrashes away from them, screaming in desperate defiance of the darkness around him, the paralysis, the _helplessness_ \--

Light flares all around him; not white and blue, not red like a programming screen, but dim and red-blue-gold-green-purple, every possible color.  Mike sucks in air and lets it out in another hoarse, pathetic noise, too hoarse to be a scream, lashes out at the closest figure he sees and then startles as a hand catches his.  He’s faster than a human, stronger, and none of the techs and soldiers could ever catch his punches like that and...and there are no straps.  There’s no override, the lights are soft and colored and--and--

“Mikey,” says--says--the boy, the boy holding his fist where he caught Mike’s punch, eyes glowing in the dark like Mike’s do in the mirror, hair all gold and messy at the fringes, freckles and--and he’s-- _Chuck_.  Chuck’s staring at him with wide, wet eyes and heaving shoulders, and Mike is instantly ashamed, the way his punishment protocols could never make him.  He drops the hand he was trying to punch with, starts to pull back--Chuck doesn't let go of his wrist, squeezing hard, reaching out for him.  “Mike, oh my god," he says, quieter, shaky.  "Bro, are you okay?  Oh my god.”  His voice is wobbling, his eyes look all wet and wrong, and Mike’s stomach is-- _ERROR,_ Mike’s chest--ah geez it’s _bad,_ it feels so _bad_ when Chuck looks at him that way.  

_TARGET ACQUIRED,_ Mike’s brain tries to tell him--panicky and animal-stupid, trying to force him to reach out.   _React to threat, negative stimulus from unauthorized party, maximum response_ \--Chuck didn’t make him feel like this, like he’s crumbling away from the inside, this is all Mike’s fault, this is Mike’s fault for being broken and--

“Oh _Mike,_ ” says Chuck, and the words clash with Mike’s voice and he realizes he’s babbling, a stupid, unwanted stream of _defective_ and _sorry_ and _broken_ and _no no no no_ _I don’t want don’t wanna hurt you NO_ and _don’t please don’t put me back in--_  “Shh, Mike, hey, you’re okay.  Bro, you’re _safe_.  God, Mike, jeez--”  He reaches out, slow, and when his hand touches Mike’s cheek Mike makes a sound, an awful sound.  He doesn’t want to make it but it tears through him anyway, hitching his ribs painfully with how sudden it is.  His heart is hammering against the inside of his chest.  

Chuck bites his lip and keeps moving in, keeps stepping closer, keeps slowly easing Mike over until his head can rest on Chuck’s warm shoulder and one big, shaking hand can rub wide circles on his back.  He can almost feel it now.  

“ _Shhh,_ ” Chuck says again, shaky and weak.  Mike gets one arm up and then the other, wraps them around those thin ribs, that core of iron under the breakable-looking exterior.  Squeezes until he hurts.  Chuck is whispering to him; a fast, comforting stream of trembling nonsense.  He’s petting Mike’s hair, his back, murmuring _“you’re safe now, safe, you’re okay bro it was just a dream, breathe Mikey please just breathe oh my god you’re okay now--_ ” like if he says that enough it’ll make it true.

Mike clings to him, and breathes.

It takes him a long, long time to come back to himself.  To run over what little he remembers of yesterday, of the weeks leading up to yesterday, of the _months_ before that.  He remembers...Kane.  Slowly going under, one override at a time, until he was trapped in his own malfunctioning body.  He remembers being sent down, _kill anyone who gets in your way_.  Remembers Chuck holding him, cradling Mike’s head in his lap and petting his hair and trying so hard to fix him.

“Motorcity,” Mike says finally, rough, and sits back.  “I’m.  You found me.”  Reaches up to scrub at his face, but--no, but there’s nothing to wipe away, his face is dry.  He thought it wouldn’t be, thought he would...something.  Something not allowed.  It felt like he was going to-- _REDACTED_ \--no, but Kane’s not here now, Mike doesn’t have to listen to that stupid voice any more.  It felt like-- _REDACTED, DISCIPLINARY ACTION WILL BE TAKEN._

“Mike?”

“I can’t,” Mike starts, and chokes on the words.  They want to come out _wrong,_ in the language they programmed into his brain, the language he _hates._ The words try to rise up in his chest; _the attempted action is returning an error, requesting maintenance._  “I want, I was, I can’t, I can’t, I c-c-c-c--”

“ _Mike_ ,” Chuck says, scared and loud, and Mike breaks off and takes a deep breath.  “Take it easy, dude, _talk_ to me.  You can’t...what?”

“I can’t--” Mike grabs a fistful of his hair, frustrated and wordless.  “I.  Chest, hurts, everything is--bad, I need to--but they took it, away, I don’t have--” this is coming out wrong, all pathetic and broken.  Chuck is staring at him, trying to understand but lost in Mike’s messed-up brain, and his eyes are wet, red.  

Right.  That’s right, that’s _right._  Mike reaches out, hisses as his hand jerks in midair, fingers spasming into painful, jagged shapes as his muscles glitch.  Touches Chuck’s cheek and pulls his fingers away wet.

“This,” he says, helplessly, and holds his wet fingertips out.  “I--can’t, they took--he didn’t want me to, he locked it up and I can’t break it, I don’t know where it is, I’ll just glitch out my--my--my--”

He can’t finish the words, but Chuck seems to know what he means--realization goes flashing across his face, and then his expression does what Mike’s heart feels like, a terrible, crumpling spasm.  “ _I’m gonna kill him,”_ he says, and reaches out, hesitates, touches Mike’s head with gentle hands.  “...We gotta start on those patches,” he says.  “The sooner the better.  I couldn’t--I passed out after I transferred your registration yesterday, I’m sorry, I should’ve--”

“Please,” Mike says fervently.  He pushes and tugs at things inside his head, blinking past error messages as he fights to bare the tangled mess of his brain as much as he can.  Forcing his way into folders, opening things, trusting Chuck can trusting Chuck trust--trust--rust--

"Mike?"

"Please," Mike says again, and swallows hard, forces his way out of the spiralling loop of thoughts.  “No, Chuckles, you’re--it’s--okay.  Please.”

The nickname is old, from somewhere before this, and it makes Chuck laugh a wet, shocked little laugh.  He’s still REDACTED he’s still--his eyes are still wet, and something in Mike’s chest knots up, his throat tightens, but...he can’t.  That.  He can’t.  

“Don’t worry, bro,” Chuck says, and he says it like he’s sure, like he can make things better.  “I’ll fix it.  I promise.”

He coaxes Mike back onto the couch, lays him down, gets his aching legs up on some kind of cushioning unit.  Puts Mike’s head in his lap and threads his long fingers through Mike’s hair, rubbing at his temples and his jaw and his shoulders as far as he can reach.  Mike feels--he feels--something, and it’s not bad.  It’s really really not bad.  It’s…

“Feels good _,_ ” he says, startled, and feels Chuck’s hands twitch.  “Feels...really good.   _Mm_.”

“Good,” says Chuck fervently, and one hand shifts tentatively and rubs at the furrow Mike didn’t notice between his brows, smoothing out the tension around his eyes over and over again.  “I’m gonna have to override.  To get to the patch directory.  Do you...do you want a screen up?  So you can see what I’m doing?”

Overrides, screens, that’s not...good.  But it’s okay.  Mike breathes in, breathes out.  Nods.  Moves his legs, to feel the way the muscles work.  

He’s ready this time, when Chuck pulls up a screen.  He doesn’t go somewhere else in his head like he did last time, he stays here in the dim, colored light with his head in Chuck’s lap.  Chuck’s hands lose their coordination as he works, stop rubbing and just settle on Mike’s temples, but that’s okay.  More than okay.  Mike watches as a list of jumbled names and files pop up.  As the first one selects--his dream simulations.  Chuck scrolls through the parameters, hisses soft and furious through his teeth, throws it away.  Moves to the next.

Most of the patches don’t seem to change anything, when Chuck deletes them.  After five, though, things start to run...smoother.  Breathing gets easier, Mike doesn’t have to remind himself to blink, he can _think_.  One or two of them fan out on the screen into huge matrices of subprocesses--when Chuck deletes those Mike can _feel_ them go, a little jolt, a sudden difference in the back of his whirring mind.

Some of them are terrifyingly strong, sudden and electrifying.  When Chuck growls and presses _delete_ for _Compliance.pcl_ Mike arches up off the couch, almost thrashes onto the floor at the sudden firestorm of fury and horror and hate that spasms through him.  It--it just-- _Kane,_ he hates Kane _so much_.  Mike thought he hated him before, but he wasn’t allowed to hate _the company that made you what you are, comply and be grateful, comply and be--_

The awful, heavy wall between him and that fury is gone now, and this isn’t a _feeling_ , not any more.  It’s a lightning bolt, it’s the dream-sensation of white-hot plasma ripping through his chest. He hates the lab, the operating room, the blank, white, sterile walls of Deluxe, he hates the reprogramming chamber, he hates Kane Co. so much and it _burns_.

“Easy, Mike,” Chuck is whispering to him, coaxing him back down, rubbing his heaving chest, easing Mike’s head back down into his lap.  “I know, bro, I know, you’re not up there any more.  I know, it’s not okay, it wasn’t okay what they did to you, I know, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.  I’m so sorry, dude--”

Mike’s hands don’t glitch as much any more, but they’re trembling now.  That’s new.  That’s--that’s not supposed to happen.  Chuck will fix it.  He’s going to fix it.  

“Yeah,” Chuck says, and strokes his hair back.  “Yeah, I will.  I’ll fix it, Mikey.  We’ll make it okay.”

They get through a hefty chunk of the patches before Mike notices that he can feel how warm Chuck’s hands are.  Notices that everything hurts, but he can _feel_ it hurting, and that the pain is starting to sort itself into small, specific points.  A heavy ache in his fists and his legs where the soft tissue slammed into metal and concrete.  A headache--not just a horrible, ever-present wrongness in his skull, but dull and sickly and right between his eyes.  His insides feel crumpled up, and as Chuck deletes another program and Mike’s brain ticks up just a little bit faster, he realizes he’s…

“...hungry,” he says, wondering.

Chuck freezes, startled--when he opens his eyes he sways a little bit, and Mike realizes how... _tired_ Chuck looks.  Way more than he did when Mike woke up, like he’s been running hard, pushing himself for hours.  His chest is heaving as he breathes, like he has to work for it.

“Wh?” he says, and he sounds all bleary too.  “I’m.  Mm.  I didn’t.  Hurt you, right?”  

Mike pushes himself up, and jeez there’s still a long list of things to clean out but he feels _lighter_ already.  “I’m,” he says, and is almost surprised by how normal the words sound coming out of his mouth.  “I’m hungry.”  And then again, more sure, louder.  “--Chuckles, I’m _hungry_.  My head--hurts.  My head hurts!  I’m hungry!”

“I’m,” Chuck starts slowly, and then he seems to see the look in Mike’s eyes--his face goes soft and then bright and then brilliant.  “Jeez, bro,” he says, “that’s great!  Ha--that’s so good, man, that’s _great!_  Let’s get you something to eat.  Come on.”

He says that, but he’s still pretty slow to get up, and he kind of sways once he’s upright.  Mike reaches out, winces as moving fast sends a spasm of glitches up his arms.  “You...okay?” he asks, and the words feel weird to say but Chuck just gives him a tired kind of smile.

“We refined the implants by the time you got them,” he says.  “...reduced the...energy load.”  He sways again, puts out a hand and leans on the couch, blinking fast, breathing a little bit too hard.  “--it’s cool.  I’m good.”

Mike made him use up his power reserves.  A heavy kind of sinking feeling hits his stomach-- _bad._  He didn’t want to do that, to make Chuck--tired, and weak, unsteady on his feet.  Mike made his--his--Mike made him--

“Mike?”

“You didn’t have to,” Mike says.  “I compromised your--utility to the company--” No, that’s wrong.  “I didn’t mean--”

“My...utility?”  Chuck is looking at him like he’s not making any sense.  “There’s nobody we have to be _useful_ for down here, bro.  Utility can go--” he stops himself, breathes out through his nose, goes on, “...I wanted you to feel better, so I tried to make that happen.  I can handle a little bit of an energy debt, come on.”

 _What if they send you on a mission?_  Mike wants to say, except there are no more missions.   _What if Kane finds out you’re drained and hurts you for it?_  except Kane isn’t here.

“...’s not safe,” he says, a little bit desperately.  “I can--I’m, optimized for protection, but I made you not safe, I’m sorry dude--” _optimized_ sits foreign and wrong in his mouth, and he grimaces at how...not-him those words sound, but Chuck is just staring at him through his hair, eyes wide and worried.

“Oh, fuck _, Mike,_ ” he says, really quietly, and--oh, _no,_ no no that’s bad, that’s-- _inappropriate on company property_ , that’s not the standard we expect of Kane Co. cadets, that’s not how good Deluxe kids talk, _watch your mouth_ \--

“Mike?”  Chuck is hovering over him again, hands out, nervously not-touching.  Mike is hunched down, is bent double, is breathing fast, breathing hard, breathing through his teeth, is breathing.  Keeps breathing.  “Talk to me, bro--you okay?”

“Don’t say,” Mike gets out, still dazed by the sudden intensity of the fear and anger and-- _shame_ the sound of the word sent through him.  He didn’t used to like swearing anyway, before the program.  They...they were so strict about it in school and then the cadets were even worse, punishments and public reprimands for _inappropriate language_ \--but now there’s an extra layer over top of it, that familiar-unfamiliar too-loud blare of programmed protocol.  “Please, Chuck.  We gotta.  We’ll get in trouble.”

“What?”  Chuck blinks, worried, and then realization flickers across his face.  “Oh.   _Oh,_ sh--shoot, dangit, right.  Ahh, dude, I’m sorry.  I’ll watch my mouth, okay?  You’re okay.  We’re not in trouble, you’re okay.”

“I know!  I know.”  This is _stupid,_ of course they’re not going to get in trouble, heck, Mike could talk like that too if he wanted to, he could--could--could--could-- _repeat what you just said, cadet, I want you to say it to your commander’s face and see how--_

“ _Mike._ ”  Chuck’s got a hand on either of Mike’s shoulders, squeezing hard and shaking him a little bit.  Mike takes a deep, startled breath, forces himself back to the present.  “Geez, bro--look, lie back down, I’m gonna keep--”

“No,” Mike says, as firmly as he knows how.  “You’re--you need.  Food.  You gotta rest.”

\--

Of course this is what Mike decides to be stubborn about.  Chuck rubs the bridge of his nose, trying to soothe the sudden throb  _power reserves low, report to recharge_  of the headache behind his eyes, and then looks up and meets Mike’s firm frown and determined glare.  

“...okay,” he say, a little bit weakly--geez, after the reprogramming session last night and the fight with Mike’s firewall, is this really all it takes to wipe him out?  “Okay, dude, whatever you say.  But we’re getting back to it as soon as I’m recharged.”

“Yeah,” says Mike firmly.  “Good, cool.”  Jitter, jerk, glitch.  His eyes flash, but whatever his programming is doing he manages to shrug off this time.  “So...where are the nutrition d-d-d--ugh.   _Dispensers_.  Around here.”

Oh.   _Oh,_ shit, food.  “Uh…” Chuck starts cautiously, “...they don’t...have those down here.  People don’t eat throat cubes, they’ve got, y’know, food.  Actual food.”

By the way Mike straightens up, intrigue flashing across his face, he forgot there was any such thing.  Chuck takes a hold of his wrist--too thin, the artificial bones stand out too much, how long has _Mike_ been dealing with an energy deficit to eat away at him like this--and pulls gently.  Mike doesn’t seem to notice he’s being pulled for a second, and then he glances down, sees Chuck holding his arm and hastily takes a few steps forward, following his lead.

“What kind of...food?” he asks, as they head out of the room--and then, as they come out into the warm, dim neon, “ _Whoa._ ”

“Pretty neat, huh?”  Chuck has only been living here for a month, give or take, but apparently that’s enough time to get a healthy kind of pride in his new home.  Seeing Mike stare around at the colors and shapes, startled and amazed, is weirdly satisfying.  “Uh...all kinds of food, dude!  Like, Jacob says there’s not nearly as much around now as the stuff they used to have before...y’know, Before, but there’s way more than throat cubes, for sure!”

Mike’s steps stutters, so Chuck has to stop walking or pull him over.  When he turns back, Mike’s tensed up again, eyes glittering in the dark.

“Who?”

“What?”  Chuck blinks at him stupidly for a second, then puts two and two together.  “Oh!  Uh, Jacob.  He owns this place, he’s letting me stay here.  I helped him fix some stuff and he said I’ve...got a good head on my shoulders.”  He studiously isn’t looking at Mike, doesn’t want him to see how pathetically Chuck latched onto just those few words of praise.  Mike’s been hearing stuff like that since he was a kid, he wouldn’t... _get_ that weird, fierce hunger for recognition.  Mike knows how good he is, he always has.  “...anyway!  So. He’s this skinny old guy, he’s kinda weird but he’s...nice?  He’s cool.”

Mike nods very slowly, like he’s integrating this information.  “Your...boss?” he tries.

“Not really?”  But it’s hard to explain any other way, so Chuck relents a second later as Mike frowns at him, confused.  “I mean sure, sorta.  He asks me to help out with stuff sometimes, but he keeps on telling me I don’t have to.”

Mike looks confused.  Chuck doesn’t blame him--Jacob is...hard to figure out.  He just _gives_ Chuck stuff, second-hand clothes from friends, food, a place to stay.  And he doesn’t seem to really want anything in return.  

...geez, actually.  Jacob seemed to be cool with this, worried about Mike when he was passed out, but is he going to be okay with...this?  Okay with _Mike_ , damaged and jumpy and optimized for combat?  

“...I’m gonna head down,” says Chuck, “You can follow me in a second, okay?  I’m just gonna let him know you’re awake.”  For a second they share a look--on the same page, silently agreed.  Mike eyes flicker to the top of the stairs, and he nods once, sharp, and pulls his hand out of Chuck’s grip.

Mike has to hold onto the railing on his way down, and Chuck goes down the stairs almost backwards, trying to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t fall--until he almost misses a step, staggers and goes down the last few steps in an ungraceful half-tumble, barely landing on his feet.  Mike makes a concerned noise and tries to speed up--when he tries to move fast he glitches again, doubling over on the stairs.

“I’m okay!”  Chuck assures him, and gets his legs sorted out and his feet under him, breathing hard but standing solidly again.  “I’m okay dude, you just--take it slow, I’m gonna go see--”

Pots clang in the kitchen, and Jacob comes out carrying a pile of cooking supplies of all shapes and sizes.  He brightens up when he sees Chuck, for some reason.

“You’re up!” he says gruffly, and drops the cooking stuff on the counter.  “How’s your buddy doin’?”

“He’s--he’s up too,” Chuck says, and Jacob just kinda...grins, like that’s good news, even though he doesn’t know Mike at all.  “He’s coming down, but there’s a lot of messed-up stuff in his programming still, and--”

Mike makes a sudden, jagged noise.  Chuck jumps and whips around--Mike is standing at the foot of the stairs with his fists raised.  His eyes are going _crazy,_ flashing and flickering, neon yellow-green in the dim light of the staircase, and they’re _fixed_ on Jacob.  

Jacob also jumped at the sound Mike made--he backs up quickly, reaches under the counter and pulls out a wrench that looks heavy enough to break a skull, and Mike sucks in a breath and Chuck can almost hear the voice in his head, _attack imminent, neutralize threat_ \--

“Whoa!”  Chuck scrambles to one side, inserts himself between Mike and Jacob and raises his hands.  Mike is doing that thing again, jittering and jerking like something is messing with his head and he’s trying to fight it.  

“I.  Want.”  Mike stares at Jacob, eyes wide and almost startled.  Jacob stares back at him, wrench raised, ready to fight.  “I want.  To hurt him, why do I.”

“Do you need an override?”

He means it well, trying to help, but Mike still flinches away from the words like they’re a threat.  Then he meets Chuck’s eyes, takes a deep breath through his nose and forces it slowly back out, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“Sorry,” Chuck says, mortified.  “No, I mean, I wasn’t gonna--”

“No,” Mike says, but not angrily.  Just slow, careful, like every word is an effort. “--I got it, I can...handle it.” He looks at Jacob again, twitches, winces.  Stands his ground.  “I want to hurt him.  Why.”

“Kane probably wanted you to take me out if you ever saw me.”  Jacob cautiously lowers his wrench, squinting at Mike’s face.  “Criminy, how young is he recruiting, now?  This ain’t what you should be doing, kid your age.  You oughta still be in school.”

Mike blinks--blinks again, frowning, confused.  “...’m not a kid,” he says.  “I’m six--nn.”  Shakes his head, brow furrowing.  “No.  ‘M seventeen.  Not a kid.”

“... _criminy_ ,” Jacob repeats, much softer, harsh at the edges like there’s a hundred other words he’d rather be saying right now.  “...seventeen.”

“Yeah?” and then he flinches again, spasming, like every muscle just tried to make a different movement all at once.  One hand flies up to his head.  “--Agh--no, _no_ , I don’t want to, _shut up!_ ”

“Mikey?”

“Hey.”  Jacob steps forward.  “Kid.  Mike?  Look at me.”

Mike’s chin jerks up, eyes blazing. Jacob doesn’t so much as twitch.  

“I wanna do the honors on this one,” he says.  “I ticked Kane off, so he put somethin’ in your head you didn’t ask for.  Way I see it, that puts this one on me.”

“Jacob,” Chuck starts, a little bit pained--Jacob shakes his head.

“I don’t want an override code or anything,” he says.  “But I wanna get rid of this for you.”

Mike stares at him for a long second, eyes wide and wary, every line of him tense to fight.  Then, very slowly, his wariness fades to something more like curiosity.

“Who...were you?” he asks.  “Why?  He wants me to hurt.  You.  Why?”

“Tell you when you’re older,” says Jacob, dry and a little bit pained, and puts his wrench down on the counter, empty-handed and non-threatening.  “Whaddya say?”

Mike’s lips thin, his throat works.  Then he glances at Chuck, back at Jacob, and nods.  His hands drop to his sides.  Jacob’s face softens a little bit under its craggy wrinkles.

“...you’re a heck of a kid,” he says.  “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Yeah,” says Mike, fast and almost convulsive.  He doesn't say the name, but he doesn't have to.  Chuck winces and Jacob's eyes flick to the blue and white Kane Co. “K” on the front of Mike's jacket.

“So,” Chuck says, and glances between Mike and Jacob.  “Okay, so we’re...doing this?”

Mike nods sharply. Chuck sighs, but steps in and leans down a little bit, lowering his voice until only Mike can hear him.

“ _Jacob’s a good guy,_ ” he says, and sees Mike’s hands work.  “ _He’s not gonna mess with you, dude._ ”

Mike doesn’t look at him, but he nods again, jerky.  

“Okay.”  This is terrible every time, but it’s what Mike asked for, and they have to get the program out somehow.  Chuck puts a hand on Mike’s arm, squeezes and murmurs, “... _override omega._ ”

Mike twitches.  “Acknowledged,” he says flatly.  “Standing by for orders.”

“Open patch directory,” says Jacob.  Mike winces again, harder, when the screen pops up and Jacob starts scrolling through it--he doesn’t move to fight, though.  His eyes stay on Jacob’s face, bright and hard and wary.  

"...geez," says Chuck, quiet but heartfelt.  He saw it just a couple of minutes ago, but...wow.  The list scrolls and scrolls, unrolling edit after edit.  "I made a couple cuts, but it's still..." he doesn't have words for what it still is--he trails off with an inadequate sort of half-shrug.  Mike resettles his weight uneasily beside him, watching with faintly-glowing eyes.  "None of this stuff is supposed to be there."

"Yeah, no kiddin'."  Jacob frowns and expands the screen with a flick of his hands, scanning the lines of code.  “What a mess.  Why’d they pick a good kid like you if they were gonna go stomping all over yer brain anyway?”

Mike startles at the words _a good kid_.  For a second, he looks really...weird.  There’s something in his face that Chuck has really never seen there before, kind of...young and hungry and hopeful.  Then he twitches and thins his lips and goes cold and impassive again.  

“There we go.”  Jacob reaches out and zooms in, isolating a single patch from the messy folder.  “Jacob//traitorpolicy...oh, that’s real classy.”  

He taps a finger on the patch and Mike spasms.  “ _Eliminate enemies of_ \--” the words run together in a rough, helpless rush before Mike catches himself and grabs his head, fingers dragging rough at his hair, yanking painfully.  “Nnh!  No!  I’m not--I don’t want--!”

“Whoa there,” Jacob growls, and lays a skinny hand on Mike’s hair.  “Son--”

“Don’t.”  Mike jerks away abruptly, and his face is tight and dark with pain.  “D’nn.  Don’ have a.  Dad.  Don’t call me ‘son’.”

“Sorry.”  Jacob pulls his hand away.  “Didn’t mean it like that.”

“Don’t call me,” Mike says again, forcing himself from word to word with dogged determination.  “Don’t call me ‘son’.”

“I’ll do my darndest not to,” Jacob promises, and Mike relaxes a little bit.  “I just kinda do that, but I’m gonna do my best not to.  You got it, though?”  Mike nods.  “Good.  I don’t want nobody hurting themselves under my roof.  Take it easy, okay?”

Mike carefully unwinds his fingers from his hair, eyes fixed on Jacob’s face, brows furrowed intensely like he’s listening to an important briefing or something.  It’s so weird to see him with his hair cut short.  For almost as long as Chuck’s known him, he hasn’t really been able to make out a big chunk of Mike’s expressions through the shaggy mop of his hair.  Now his face looks...unprotected.  Vulnerable.

“I won’t hurt myself under your roof,” Mike repeats.  

“Good.”  Jacob squints at him.  “...you shouldn’t be hurtin’ yerself anywhere anyway.”

Mike doesn’t answer that.  Just watches him with those wide, wary, glowing eyes.  Jacob grimaces a little, then shakes his head.  “Okay then.  I’m just about down to the core program, if you give me two more minutes I should have it all stripped out and we can close up.  And then get some food in you.”

Mike’s stomach growls again.  He jumps and stares down at himself, looking frankly startled, then smiles that raw, awkward, unpracticed smile that lights up his face like sunlight.

“I’m hungry,” he says again, mostly to himself.

“We’ll get that taken care of,” Jacob says firmly.  “You could use feeding up.  Yer a growing boy, you gotta get some protein in you before you blow away in the next stiff breeze.  Now, gimme two more minutes to take a crack at this thing.”

It’s more like a minute.  Jacob never really crossed Chuck’s radar as a coder, as having anything in common with Chuck--he’s old, he’s an Authority Figure, and Authority Figures don’t do...Chuck things.  They don’t code, they don’t get excited about projects, they don’t compromise or discuss.  Chuck still has to resist the urge to stand small and talk quiet when he talks to Jacob.  Has to force himself to say “no” sometimes, and still winces when Jacob gets ticked off at an engine problem and slaps his car’s hood.   _What do you mean you_ can’t, _your estimates for this upgrades enhancement of your physical abilities clearly stated--_

Mike’s hand is squeezing his so hard the skin over the artificial muscle will probably bruise.  Chuck squeezes back, and forces himself not to think about it.  Watches with interest, instead, as Jacob snips coded connections neatly, closes off loops left sloppily unfinished, isolates the patch with his name on it and then finally, when it’s alone on his screen, banishes it with a flick of one hand.  

“End executive override session,” Chuck says hurriedly, and Mike blinks and lets out a long breath.  His eyes, which before now had been drawn irresistibly back to Jacob no matter where he looked, wander over the hideout, across the counter and past the messy kitchen, fascinated.  

“Wow,” he says, kind of soft.  

"Okay," says Jacob, obviously pleased, and holds out a hand.  Mike startles a bit, but doesn't tense up to throw a punch.  "Let's try that again.  I'm Jacob."

Mike blinks at him for a second, apparently lost--then something seems to click inside his head, a long-forgotten routine.  "...nice to...meet you," he says, a little haltingly, and takes Jacob's outstretched hand, giving it a single firm shake.  "I'm, uh...Mike.  Chilton."

"Nice to meet you too," Jacob says, apparently amused, and lets go, turning to Chuck instead.  "Whaddya want for breakfast?  Figure we’ll need double of everything, you were already enough to eat a guy outta house and home.”

“My gastric conversion system,” Chuck starts, guilty and pained, and Jacob shakes his head, already waving the point away.

“I’m not blamin’ you.  It’s healthy, kids your age eating plenty.  Kane never seemed to give much of a sh--” and he’s faster on the uptake than Chuck could ever have hoped, because he sees the way the beginning of the curse makes Mike flinch all over.  He pauses for a second, eyes narrowed, then continues more carefully.  "...he never did care enough about makin' sure kids got as much food as they needed.  We’re gonna make sure you don’t go hungry, don’t you worry about that.”

He lives up to his word.  He goes creaking around, gathering all sorts of ingredients, then vanishes into the kitchen and starts doing things that steam and smoke and smell...honestly, really good.  Maybe it’s just the way Chuck’s stomach is rumbling every couple of minutes (maybe it’s the way Mike is sitting next to him, battered and hungry but upright and _alive_ ) but today even Jacob’s weird vegetable food smells good.

Mike gives the waffles Jacob puts down in front of him a dubious kind of look.  Chuck looks his own food over--he can’t really tell what it’s made of.  Then again sometimes it’s better not to know.  And it tastes...okay.  

It’s bland compared to most Motorcity food, but it’s still way more strongly-flavored than throat cubes.  Chuck watches Mike cut his food, half nervous and half in anticipation, but Mike doesn’t react to the first bite.  Just chews for a minute and then kind of...shrugs and takes another bite.  

“...Mike?”

“It’s good,” says Mike.  Which...is _not_ how he should be reacting to tasting real flavors for the first time in his life.  There must be something still screwed up in his sensory function, _dammit._ Chuck watches him eat a few more bites, brow furrowed, and then sighs and gives up on that for the moment.  Mike isn’t going to let Chuck back into his patches yet.  It’s been a long time since they hung out together but Chuck can still remember that stubborn way Mike squares his shoulders, lips thin and jaw jutting rebelliously, when somebody tries to make him do something he’s digging his heels in on.  Chuck’s not getting back into his patches yet, so all he can do is make sure Mike eats, even if he doesn’t taste it.  

And he does.  Mike packs down even more than Chuck does, eating steady and slow but non-stop, until Chuck notices him wincing and reaches over to grab his wrist.

“Easy on your stomach, dude.”

Mike blinks at him, uncomprehending.  

“You can only eat so much at a time,” Chuck reminds him.  “This isn’t like throat cubes, it takes up space.  You’re gonna throw up if you’re not careful.”

“Throw up,” Mike says, and frowns, apparently thinking back.  It takes him a second or two, but then his face brightens with recognition and then twists in disgust.  “--oh!  Ugh.”  He looks back down at his plate.  “But I need to eat so I can recharge.”

“Well--it’s going to take a while,” Chuck says.  “Bro, you can’t fix everything in one day.”  Mike is starting to frown again, stubborn--Chuck rushes on.  “You’re gonna have to take time to get back to where you were before they started to…” he kind of awkwardly waves a hand at Mike.  Mike winces just a little bit.  “No--sorry dude, I’m just saying you’re…they hurt you pretty bad, Mikey.”

“I’m not,” says Mike, but he can’t meet Chuck’s eyes.  

“I’m with Chuck,” says Jacob, on his way past with a huge bag of something called “potting soil” in his arms.  “You gotta give yerself time to heal, kiddo.”

“No!” Mike says.  “I can do it, I--”

“ _Mike._ ”  

Mike subsides, breathing a little bit too hard.  Chuck drags his hands through his hair, unsure what there is to say that can make this better.  

“Look,” he says finally.  “If anybody could will themselves better just by working hard, it would be you, Mikey.  But that’s not how it works.”

Mike thins his lips, looks away but doesn’t argue.  Chuck chews the inside of his cheek for a minute, conflicted, and then sighs and lets go of his arm.  

“Trust me on this one, bro?  Look, let’s just...get this stuff cleaned up, and then we can get showered.  And then you need new clothes, dude.”

Mike blinks, distracted, looks down at himself and huffs out a breath.  “...yeah,” he says, and plucks at his half-shredded uniform jacket with an expression of distaste.  “Ugh.  Good call.”

“Not yet though,” says Chuck, and pushes himself up.  He feels better already, steadier and more awake as the calories are converted to energy, flooding his system.  “First, you need a shower.”

Mike nods once and stands, and then goes still.  Waiting.  Chuck is gathering up the dishes they used--he gets them all stacked and then turns and sees Mike still standing there and immediately feels like an idiot.  “Oh, shoot.  Sorry, you don’t know where--they’re upstairs, between the bedrooms.”

“Okay,” says Mike.  He still doesn’t move.  Chuck puts the dishes slowly back down, concerned now.  Mike is just staring at him with a weird, watchful kind of attentiveness.  He barely blinks, it’s kind of freaky.

“...Bro, what are you thinking right now?  Talk to me.”

“I’m…”  Mike’s brows furrow.  “Waiting.”

“For me?”  They used to shower sometimes together, but that was when they were small--even before Mike vanished into the mouth of the beast, they hadn’t done that for years.  “What are you waiting for me to do?”

“There has to be a tech to run the sanitation ch--” Mike starts, and then stops, frowning harder now.  “...Uh...wait.  Wait, no, that’s not how--that’s another...wrong thing.  Right?  That’s wrong.”

God.  Well, at least he caught it.  Because yeah, that’s not right, that’s definitely not how you get clean if you have a choice.  Sanitation chambers were made to hard-clean chemical techs exposed to harmful material--they’re fast, and they’re effective, but they’re not comfortable.  A hard spray of stinging water from all sides, burning-hot or icy-cold depending on the type of chemical exposure, and then a fog of neutralizing solution, hot and powdery and awful-tasting.  Then a rush of hot, dry air, hard enough to knock you off your feet.  Fifteen-second deep-clean.

And when Kane got tired of treating Mike like a person, that’s where he threw him to get clean.  God.

“No,” says Chuck, small and strangled, and rallies himself.  “Yeah, that’s...that’s wrong. Good catch.  Uh...we just have showers down here.  Remember showers?  Just water.”

“Sorta?”  Mike squints, trying to remember.  “...Comes down from...overhead, right?”

“Yeah!”  Relief makes Chuck’s voice louder than he means it to be--Mike jumps a little and then grins, happy and satisfied and still too... _relieved_ for Chuck’s tastes.  He shouldn’t have to be relieved when he does a good job, because he shouldn’t expect to be punished, dammit--

But that’s pointless to be mad about right now, and Mike’s happy and that’s good enough.  Just for now, Chuck will take what he can get.

“I’ll show you how it works,” he says, and takes Mike’s shoulder as gently as he can to lead the way.


	4. try this, mikey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a little bit more than a week since Chuck found Mike, when Chuck decides it's time for a test. For the past three days, he's attacked the sensory section of Mike’s programming like Jacob pulling weeds in his garden, uprooting unwanted connections and deleting with a vengeance. Mike walked into the kitchen this morning and wrinkled up his nose and went “...what--ugh.” and that’s good enough proof for Chuck. It's time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....................*UST intensifies*

They clear out all but a few of the patches by the fourth day.  Chuck can only do so many in a day--Mike steadfastly refuses to let him keep going after a while, looking Chuck dead in the eyes and telling him “You’re trying too hard, I’ll be fine.”  He has to stutter and hesitate and force his way through the words, but he gets them out in the end, and there’s no shaking him.  

Chuck almost forgets, until that fourth day, about the one patch he already knows about.  The memories of that first morning, waking up to Mike’s thrashing and cracked, awful screaming, are kind of...foggy.  The look on Mike’s face when he opened his eyes, the sounds he made, the desperate way his chest heaved for air, those are all crystal-clear, but Chuck couldn’t recall what he said, what Mike said, any more than he could say what he had for dinner three weeks ago.

So he’s not expecting it, when he comes across a patch buried at the bottom of the mountain of bullshit patches.  He flicks it open, a familiar mental motion by now, scans it and--scans again.  

“...okay,” he says, and Mike jumps--neither of them has said a word since Chuck started this session.  Mike is just lying back, like he always does, spread out across the couch with his head on Chuck’s crossed legs.  Chuck pats his forehead once or twice, absently, just to let him know everything is okay--Mike settles back a little bit and makes a questioning kind of noise.  “Y’know how some of the stuff they did was, uh, emotional stuff?”

“Mm,” says Mike, tight and grim and quiet.  Chuck winces, but soldiers on.

“...I think I just found another one of those.  Like that stupid... _compliance_ program, the one that tried to make you like Kane Co.--”

“Delete it,” says Mike immediately, hoarse.  

“Okay, I mean, I will, but I just wanted to--”

“Get it out of my head,” Mike says, and there’s a definite edge of pleading to his voice now, which is really not fair at all.  “I don’t want it.”

“Fine.”  Mike--can handle it, he _can,_ he’s not breakable.  Chuck takes a couple of deep breaths.  “--here, sit up okay?  This might do some stuff to your emotional centers and I don’t want you to fall off the couch again.”

It only happened once--when Chuck deleted the program that punished Mike for resistance and unsatisfactory performance--but the reminder still makes Mike’s lips thin and his throat work.  He nods anyway and sits up, pressing his back against the cushions and dropping his head back on the back of the couch.  Throws a glance Chuck’s way and raises an eyebrow, wry.  

“Good,” says Chuck, with as much authority as he can muster, and Mike rolls his eyes a little but his shoulders relax.  “That’ll work.”

For a second when he deletes the patch, he doesn’t see any difference.  Mike sits still, except for one tapping foot, and his eyes pulse softly.  He doesn’t seem...upset, or hurting, nothing like that.

“Mike?”

“...Mm?”  Mike is staring into the middle-distance, brow furrowed faintly.  He looks distracted.

“How do you feel?”

“Just, uh…” Mike’s frown deepens.  He blinks a couple of times.  “What did you just...fix?”

“I just switched a function back on.”  Chuck edges a little bit closer, cautious.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m--” Mike starts, and catches on the word.  He takes a breath, and then frowns even deeper, apparently startled, when the exhale trembles.  “--fine.  But I feel kinda--” he raises a hand to his chest, presses it to his breastbone and shakes his head.  “My...throat hurts.  And my chest.  And my head and my eyes and--oh.”  His face twists, something dark and tight and hurting behind his eyes.  “...oh.”

“Kane didn’t want you to…”  Chuck waves a hand kind of awkwardly at Mike, and Mike takes another shaking breath.  “Y’know, it’s okay if you’re... _not_ okay, I mean--”

“I’m _fine!_ ”  Mike says, sudden and loud, and his hand flies up to his throat as his voice cracks a little bit.  He swallows hard, forces his voice even again.  “I’m fine, dude.  I’m not gonna _cry_ or something, I don’t need--”

“Maybe you...should?” Chuck reaches out, very cautiously--he knows anxiety attacks, has had plenty himself, has helped other R&D kids through them--but this isn’t an anxiety attack.  This is something different completely.  “I dunno, if you feel like you need to, maybe you should just, uh...let it happen, bro.”

Mike stares at him like the idea is new, strange.  Takes another slow, exploratory breath, and blinks too fast as it shudders on the way out.

“I,” he starts slowly, and his voice sounds hoarse and choked.  “I feel…” he swallows hard.  “...I can’t stop it, why is it--it didn’t _hurt_ before.  I thought.  I didn’t remember--”  He swallows again, almost panicky, looks up at Chuck with wide eyes.  “This is--this is normal,” he says, like it’s a question.  “This is okay?”

Chuck’s heart very quietly breaks a little more.  “Yeah, dude,” he says, and settles for a bracing hand on Mike’s shoulder.  “It’s cool, I’m...right here.  To, uh...help you out.”

“You’re--here,” Mike repeats, jerky, and swallows again, painful.  His voice wobbles desperately on the words.  “That’s--but that’s _good,_ that makes me happy and this feels-- _bad._  I never had to before, it didn’t _hurt,_ why does it hurt now?!”  His voice is getting faster, more unsteady; he sucks in another fast, shallow breath.  “I don’t wanna--” he sniffs, blinks a couple times again and then scrubs at his eyes, and watching Mike, perfect, untouchable Mike sit there and try not to cry is--it’s so bad, it’s awful to watch.  Especially because he’s fighting so hard not to, fighting and _losing._ Losing control like this is freaking him out even more, adding a twist of panicky horror to the hurt and fury and old fear.

“Mikey…” this is a stupid time, this is _such_ a stupid time for Chuck’s chest to feel like somebody put it in a vice, for his eyes to be prickling and hot with sympathetic tears.  Not now, when Mike needs him so much, this is no time to be a crybaby.  Chuck clears his throat.  It doesn’t help.  “Sometimes your body wants to do stuff and it’s...it’s not something wrong, an override or anything, it’s just, uh...it’s, y’know, just what you need.”

“I c--no I _can’t_ ,” Mike says, tight and panicky, and scrubs at his eyes again, shakes his head, sniffs.  “ _Unacceptable behavior,_ it’s--we’re not allowed, don’t make me--”

“Mike-- _Mike!_ ”  He’s still trying to talk, hands moving restlessly, eyes wide and wild and teeth bared as he fights with himself, and Chuck has to grab his wrists to make him listen, pulling him around, making him look.  “Mike.  It’s _okay_ this time.  You’re okay, bro.  Just--let go.”

Mike stares at him for a long, long moment, wide eyes wet and overflowing, lips pressed thin and tight together and chin trembling.  And then he tries to breathe out and the first sob bursts out of him, harsh and agonized, and his face just-- _crumples._ His whole body sways under the force of it, and he reaches out desperately, grabs Chuck and pulls him in to hide his face in one shoulder.

Chuck sits there paralyzed for a second as Mike’s back shakes under his hands, feeling the warm huff of Mike’s shaky breathing against his chest.  Then Mike makes the smallest, faintest sound, a choked little moan, and Chuck’s jolted awake and moving.  Cautiously, he lifts one arm and then the other, moving slow and easy, wrapping both arms around his best friend and resting his chin in shaggy brown hair.  

This is the first time he’s ever... _held_ Mike, not just hugged him or thrown an arm around him or crumpled over and let Mike hold him, curled up as small as he could to fit into Mike’s shorter arms.  Mike used to laugh at him a little bit, back then, but not like the older kids did, like he was being cruel.  He used to pat Chuck’s back, and talk to him about nothing as he cried, not pointing the tears out, letting them happen.  Rambling and telling awful jokes until Chuck cracked and laughed an awful, wet, snotty laugh and the crying jag was over.

Chuck has no idea how Mike used to do it.  Is this normal?  Is he supposed to feel like this, all hot and tight and hard in his guts, like he wants--like he could--it’s almost _anger._  Furiously protective, fierce and unequivocal like nothing he’s felt in a long, long time.  Did Mike feel like this, all those years ago?  How did he talk like normal, act like nothing was wrong?  

“ _You’re okay,_ ” Chuck says finally, hoarse and tiny and patently untrue, and Mike lets out another almost-silent whisper of a sob, choked off in his throat to a thin whine of misery.  “All that messed-up stuff is over now, bro, you made it.”

Mike makes a hitching noise at that, startled and almost amazed--his hands clench hard against Chuck’s back, tugging at his shirt.  Chuck raises a hesitant hand and lays it very carefully on the shaggy, roughly-trimmed hair on the back of Mike’s head, combing square, bony fingers over his best friend’s scalp.  Down the back of his neck, back up to the unruly hair at his cowlick, and then just cups a hand on the back of Mike’s neck and holds on, squeezing just a little.

“ _I wasn’t--_ ” Mike says, and doesn’t finish.  Shakes his head, thumping his skull against Chuck’s shoulder a few times in a dull, persistent rhythm.  “... _’s stupid._ ‘M just--”  Another hitching little noise, a gross, wet sniff.

“You’re not.  It’s not.”  What’s he even supposed to say?  Chuck chews on his lips, thoughts spinning desperately, searching for something that can help make this better.  “It’s over now,” he says again, since that seemed to help, and Mike shifts against him, presses closer, holds onto him so tight it almost aches.  “It must’ve been--god, Mike, I know it was...really, really hard, but you made it.  You made it, dude, you totally made it out. You did good, Mikey.”

Mike makes a shuddering little sound, sniffs wet and awful and then jerks his head, just a little.  It could have been another little leftover glitch, but it wasn’t.  It was a nod, and Chuck’s heart leaps a little bit in his chest even while the words he’s saying make his eyes burn and his chest ache.  

“None of that should’ve happened to you.”  And Mike squeezes him again, presses his face into Chuck’s shoulder, warm and wet.  “You were the--the best part of Deluxe, dude, you were trying to help people and then Kane turned around and did the worst stuff to you, and that’s not--f-fair.  It’s not fair.”

Mike shivers when Chuck’s hand rubs the nape of his neck, but the muscles in his back are knotted-tense and when Chuck’s fingers rub into a knot he makes another shaking noise, louder this time.  

“You’re gonna get better,” Chuck says, with all the conviction he’s never felt when he said it to himself.  “I’m gonna help, Jacob’s gonna help, you’ll find people down here who are actually not jerks and--we’ll make this okay, dude.”

Another tiny nod.  

“...can’t believe he turned off _crying,_ ” Chuck says, grumbling now.  “What a--” but there are things he can’t say, dammit.  “--jerk.”

Mike laughs wetly.  “ _...can say that again,_ ” he mumbles.  “This...sucks, though.  Mmh.”  He scrubs at his face, sniffs a couple of times.  “This is normal?  This is how it feels for everybody?  And--people still do it?”

“Yeah.”  

Mike sniffs again, grimaces.  “... _Why?_ ”

“Dude, come on,” says Chuck.  “You feel a little bit better, right?”

Mike swallows, rubs his eyes, straightens up.  “...yeah,” he says, thick and quiet.  “I guess so.”

“That’s what it’s for,” Chuck says, and ruffles up Mike’s hair.  Mike looks up at him with red eyes and grins a little bit shakily.  He looks...tired, but better.  “It’s just, y’know, something people do.  It’s not fun, but shutting it off is...wrong.  People have to cry sometimes.”

“And I’m people,” Mike says, dryly amused, and slumps back with a deep, deep sigh.  “I guess.”

“Yeah, bro,” says Chuck firmly.  “Yeah, you are.”

\--

Once the patches are gone, things get considerably easier.  It’s still discouragingly common for Chuck to find another string of bio-linked code that’s completely, devastatingly screwed up, and he knows there are even more he’s not seeing yet; the things he thought were solved when he cleared out the patch directory keep popping back up under stress, wiping out senses for hours at a time or erasing Mike’s ability to comprehend time passing.  He still sleeps badly and wakes up multiple times a night, usually with a strangled noise and a wild punch at whatever’s closest--in other words, Chuck.  He still can’t find the words to express how he feels a lot of the time, and simple words keep dropping out of his vocabulary when he needs them.

Those times are getting slowly fewer and farther between, which is a small mercy.  Every day Mike seems to get more functional, more comfortable in his own skin.  More and more like the kid Chuck grew up with.  He’s always been a resilient guy--it’s definitely not a linear process, but he’s slowly improving.

And that’s a great thought, but the setbacks are still...pretty rough.

Chuck should have known better than to leave Mike alone before lunch. When he finds him, he's munching his way through one of Jacob’s dishes--a kale and mustard green salad that's inoffensive only compared to Jacob’s usual creations. Chuck’s tried it. He wouldn't have believed it was possible for leaves to be so spicy and bitter.

“Hey, bro,” he sighs, sliding into a seat beside Mike. “You don't have to eat that, we've got lots more options down here.”

Mike blinks at him, finishes chewing and swallows. “Okay?” He obediently puts down his fork, watching Chuck, but from his blank, wide-eyed expression he's not even sure what the problem is.

Chuck rakes a hand through his hair. “I mean, do--do you like it? It's okay if you do! It's just, I didn't think you would, and if you don't, we can get you something else to eat.”

Mike hesitates, working his way through that, and finally shrugs in bewilderment and picks up his fork again. Chuck bites his lip, frustrated. Okay, maybe a more specific question would be easier to answer.

“Do you like the flavor?”

Mike squints thoughtfully as he chews. “I... guess? Kinda hard to tell. I can tell it has a flavor!” he adds quickly, like Chuck might have been confused about that. “Don't think I would've known before you,” he waves the fork vaguely at his head. “...yeah. It's just.” He shrugs, apparently finished trying to wade through an explanation of things he barely understands himself, and takes another mouthful of incredibly spicy salad.

“Okay,” Chuck says faintly, and takes a breath. “Looks like some of the stuff I haven't fixed yet is messing up your sense of taste, which means probably smell too, since they're really closely connected.” He's about to go on when he realizes Mike's shoulders are hunching, his eyes tight and distressed. “...Mikey?”

“Tastes like...something,” Mike says quietly, gaze fixed on his plate. He’s got this...look on his face, tight and ashamed, like this was some kind of challenge he was supposed to live up to.  Like he _failed_ something somehow.  “Something kinda sharp, it’s got a little bit of bite to it, that's all I...all I can get.  Sorry.”

It's possible that Chuck will eventually get used to the suckerpunch of grief/rage/horror/guilt, but he's not there yet. He breathes in carefully through his nose, leans in to put an arm over Mike’s shoulders and tries to keep his voice from shaking. “Mikey, it's not--it wasn't a test. You didn't mess up, okay? It's not _your_ fault your code’s all out of whack, okay, it's the _idiots_ who let it get--!” Mike is staring at him.  Chuck stops, takes a couple of fast breaths and forces himself to _calm the hell down._  Ranting about this might feel good, but it’s totally not helping.

“It's not your fault,” he repeats firmly. “I just, I want to fix everything, and it's going to take me a while, and until I finish I need you to keep me updated, okay? Some of this stuff is going to be tricky, and it'll be helpful to know what's wrong in the first place. You think you can do that?”

By the end Mike's meeting his eyes, and he nods immediately. “Yeah, I can. Status report.” He quirks Chuck a little smile. “I can tell you about what I know is wrong. But that's not…” He looks down, flexes a hand, fingers curling and uncurling. “Not gonna be enough, I guess. Like the taste thing, I didn't know that was…uh.  I didn’t--” He struggles for a second, mouth open but no words coming out, and then lifts one hand in the air, palm up in a helpless gesture in substitute for words.

“You didn't know there was still a problem,” Chuck translates, pushing away the sick feeling that’s becoming way too familiar, surfacing every time he discovers a new layer of fucked-upness to Mike's mess of piecemeal coding.   _Because you've forgotten what it's like to have fully functional senses_ , he doesn't say out loud. “Okay. That's fine, that's--we'll figure this out together.”

He lets Mike finish his salad, and then settles in next to him and settles in to do some cleaning up, searching for things that aren’t as easy to find as the patch directory.  The patches were the easiest to find, listed all together--the quick and easy way to force edits onto Mike’s personality, to compel him to follow orders.  Thankfully, either his technicians didn’t care or they wanted what they were doing to be reversible.  

But there were obviously one or two who thought it was necessary to do the job _right_ , which means there are blocks and switches and internal processes that have been switched on or off, toggled and edited and occasionally just screwed up and left that way.  Like the difference between Jacob painting the outside of a car to look how he wanted it and the way he fiddles with the engine block, changing how they run from the inside.  They’re frustratingly hard to find, aggravatingly hard to edit back to baseline.

It’s a painstaking process,  all in all, but Chuck is making definite headway, especially in the tangled-up mess of Mike’s sensory system.  His brain _wants_ to work right, has already done some healing on its own without constant overrides.  Chuck combs his fingers absently through Mike’s hair, and tries his best to help it along.

It feels like it’s been hours, but actually it’s probably only been half of one, when Mike’s body shifts enough to distract Chuck from his brain.  Something warm and heavy thumps against his shoulder.  

“ _Mmn_ ,” Chuck says, and then blinks away the diagnostics behind his eyes and refocuses.  “Whuh?”

Mike is slumped over in his seat, head resting against Chuck’s shoulder, eyes closed.  For a split second, the panicky part of Chuck’s brain goes _oh god you shut his heart off he’s_ dead _Mike’s dead,_ and then Mike lets out a soft sound and shifts a little bit, and Chuck realizes he’s _asleep._

“Aww, dude,” he says, but quietly.  When he puts a hand on Mike’s shoulder, Mike’s bruised eyelids flicker and he tenses up for a second--then he relaxes again, letting out a sharp little sigh and going still.

Mike manages to sleep for another ten minutes before he gets restless again.  He told Chuck once, in halting half-sentences and frustrated hand-gestures, that he doesn’t have the programming for his simulation-dreams now, but his brain still likes to throw the scenarios and situations at him when he sleeps, like it’s a force of habit--but mixed up, illogical, disorientingly _wrong._  And sometimes, even worse, he has more of those dreams like the one that woke him the first night.  They take him in seconds from restlessly dreaming to seizing and moaning and thrashing, eyes open but blind.  He screams and snarls and _begs,_ arms reaching to push something away--or even worse, pinned at his sides, jerking and twitching as he struggles like he can’t remember how to move.

Today, though, it looks like they’re lucky.  He’s certainly not sleeping quietly, but he’s not struggling against...whatever he dreams is holding him down.  Chuck sits still and pulls up one of his projects on a screen with a flick of his neural implants, soldiering through code as well as he can when he’s constantly trying to monitor the way Mike’s breathing changes and the subtle shift of his body.

The restlessness doesn’t go anywhere though--for once, it doesn’t culminate in Mike jolting awake or lashing out.  He just murmurs and shifts in his sleep, dreaming restlessly, and then takes a sudden, surprised little breath and goes still.  When Chuck glances down, his eyes are open, sleepy and distant.

“...’m awake,” he says, like he’s...double-checking.  He sounds almost surprised.  

“Yeah,” says Chuck.  “Definitely awake.”  

“Dreamed…”  Mike pushes himself up, brows furrowed slightly.  “...I got up and did...normal stuff.  It felt normal.  I thought I was awake and...but I wasn’t, there was stuff that was wrong but it all felt normal then.”

Despite himself, Chuck snorts.  “Yeah, I’ve had that one,” he says.  “Dreams are weird, huh?”

“You’ve had…?”  Mike frowns.  “How?”

“Pretty sure everybody _ever_ has had that dream, dude,” says Chuck.  “Like, ‘hey, I know you went to sleep expecting something different from your everyday life, but instead how about we just replay your morning over and over again?”

Mike is...grinning.  Chuck stops rambling, happy but startled--runs over what he just said in his head and can’t see any reason for the way Mike is looking at him, all warm and bright.

“Mike?”

“Huh?”  Mike glances at him, sees the questioning look on his face.  “What?”

“What are you so happy about, dude?”  Chuck nudges him with one elbow, and Mike grins wider and nudges him back.  “Seriously, what’s so funny?”

“It’s just…”  Mike shakes his head.  “Nah, it’s cool.  Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s my job to worry about it,” Chuck points out.  Mike snorts.

“That dream,” he says.  “That was normal.”

“Uh...sure.”

“No, but.  That was a human thing.  I thought I was messed up again, but…” he shrugs, still smiling.  “I dunno.  Haven’t had a normal dream in...a long time.”

...oh.

Something kind of heavy and emotional tries to squeeze Chuck’s chest and the back of his throat.  It hurts, and this is the worst possible time for this when Mike is actually happy for once--gotta change the subject.

“Now you just have to have the ‘going to work naked’ dream,” he says, and Mike blinks and stares at him, eyes wide, frankly startled.  

“The _what?_ ”

“You’re just not human until you dream you’re trying to find your clothes in the middle of Kane Co. tower,” Chuck says solemnly.  “When I have it people are pointing and laughing at me, but you’d probably just get applause.”

“Aw, no,” says Mike.  “I’d clap for you.”

Chuck pokes him in the side.  He mostly means to distract Mike before Mike can comment on the sudden burn of heat in Chuck’s face, but Mike _yelps,_ a hilarious little startled noise.  He grabs for Chuck’s hand--Chuck grins, encouraged and amazed at the way such a tiny thing can get such a strong response, and scrabbles his fingers at Mike’s ribs.  

“Quit it!”  Mike snorts, startled, and smacks at him.  “Pffha--wh-what the heck is--dude!”

“You’re _ticklish?!_ ”  Chuck pokes at him again, delighted.  “Oh my god, _Mikey_!”

“Stoppit!”  Mike is laughing, and it’s almost like old times, he almost sounds normal again.  “Dude--oh no you don’t, get back here!”

He yanks Chuck back toward him and sticks a hand in his armpit, and he doesn’t really seem to know how to tickle somebody but he doesn’t really have to because Chuck shrieks like a siren and flails at him.

He’s still pulling on his arm, laughter winding down to undignified snorts, when Mike goes still.  Chuck goes still too, unnerved and worried as Mike’s smile falls; his eyes are on the place his hand is gripping Chuck’s wrist.

“Uh…”  Chuck shifts a little bit, not pulling away anymore--Mike doesn’t seem to notice.  “...Mike?”

Mike startles hard and pulls his hand away.  “Sorry,” he says, but his eyes stay fixed on Chuck’s arm.  The laughter from a second ago is still lingering on his face, but he looks far away and distracted now, and his brows are furrowed like he’s trying to remember something.  “I--sorry.  I just didn’t realize....”

“No, no no.”  Chuck reaches out hastily, grabs Mike’s hands and squeezes.  “Bro, it’s cool!  I just...you looked really...I dunno.”

“It’s been a really long time,” Mike says, and reaches out slowly to touch Chuck’s forearm again with just his fingertips. That look still hasn’t left his face; distant and wondering and almost sad.  But the longer he stays there, one hand on Chuck’s arm, the more the sad emptiness fades out of it, leaving the bemused surprise behind.  “... _wow._  Your skin’s so soft.  I...I kinda forgot, what ‘soft’ felt like.  Y’know?”

Chuck’s skin is dirty and bruised and burned in a couple of places, but Mike touches it like he’s afraid he’ll hurt Chuck if he presses too hard and it’s kind of scary but kind of adorable and great at the same time.  The wonder is still there and now that smile is back too, surprised and bright, quirking up the corners of his mouth.

“I can stop,” he says, a second later and belated, and pulls his hand away.  “If that’s not--that’s not something people do, right?  I mean--”

“I was just surprised,” says Chuck earnestly.  “You can touch me as much as you want, dude.”

Across the kitchen, Jacob rolls his eyes and wanders into another room, closing the door quietly behind him.  Chuck glances after him, but then Mike is reaching out for his hand again and Jacob’s not important any more.  Mike glances up at him when he takes Chuck’s hand, apparently checking if this is really okay; Chuck nods, and Mike smiles a bright, delighted little smile and pulls Chuck’s hand over, settling it on the table in front of him.  

Chuck doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he wasn’t expecting how _gently_ Mike touches him.  Mike’s fingers are rough with callouses but he’s almost unbearably careful, brushing his fingertips over Chuck’s knuckles, down his fingers to his ragged nails. He presses the pad of a finger against the rough edge of one nail, focused and intent on every movement, then rubs the same fingertip along the inside of Chuck’s wrist and down his forearm, underneath where the skin is thin and soft. It doesn't quite tickle, but it feels--Chuck’s not really sure. He just works on not shivering or doing anything weird.

Mike does it again, nail then forearm, and again, apparently focused on the contrast between hard/rough and soft/giving. Again and again, slow and methodical, eyes following his fingers.  

Just as Chuck is starting to get used to the careful little touches up his arms and across his fingers, Mike glances up at him and smiles.  His eyes flicker over Chuck’s face, and then pause on the untrimmed fall of his bangs.  

Chuck is just about to say something, just to break the silence--probably a self-deprecating joke about his stupid hair, jeez--when Mike raises a hand, reaching out cautiously, and then pauses.  He stays there for a few seconds, fingers curling in uncertainly, until Chuck gets with the program and nods again.  Then he reaches out, smiling a little, and tentatively strokes Chuck’s hair.

He must like the feeling, because a minute later both hands are cupping the curve of Chuck’s skull, stroking from the crown of his head down to his neck and it feels _really nice_. Muscles Chuck didn't know were tense start unwinding all through his back and shoulders.

After a few minutes he stops tensing up with every gentle touch; after a few more, Mike trails his nails over Chuck’s scalp gently and Chuck shivers all over and lets out an unintentional, strangled little sigh.  Mike’s hands twitch and go still.  His eyes fix, wide and guilty, on Chuck’s face.

“...Chuck?”

“No, don't--” Chuck starts, and bites his lip. “Um. I mean. You’re okay, bro.”

“Feels okay?” Mike says cautiously.  And then, in a rare flash of self-consciousness, “--’s not weird, right?”

“Feels _good_ ,” Chuck mutters, and oh god _no_ , this is not a good time to blush! Oh god he's so dumb and now Mike’s gonna think he's weird and everything will be weird and awful and--

“Cool!” Mike says, pleased, and goes back to stroking his hair.

Fifteen minutes later, Chuck’s thinking it's not that he didn't mean what he said about _touch me as much as you want_ , he just wasn't expecting Mike to take him _exactly_ at his word. Hair stroking was followed by slow, contented hair combing, Mike peacefully running fingers through Chuck’s hair, (careful after the first tangle that made Chuck yelp).  After he eventually got tired of Chuck’s hair, Mike moved on to carefully studying the texture and softness of Chuck’s shirt, switching from hair to skin to fabric like he’s contrasting their textures.  If he didn't have such a contented look, Chuck might almost think--but no, that’s a mean thing to even suspect.  Mike isn't messing with him, he's just really happy to have so much sensation back. Chuck just happens to have the textures Mike missed feeling, that's all.

...apparently including his face. Which is...that might not be quite as okay as the other stuff, Chuck might possibly be just a little bit not ready for that one.  Mike reaches out and touches his cheek with that weird expression of utter, focused intensity, and Chuck can’t pretend he doesn’t feel the heat flood abruptly across his cheeks.  He manages to sit still for all of two seconds before he can’t anymore; he twitches away with a high, nervous laugh.

“Ahaha, you probably don't want to do that, bro, I'm all oily and gross and--I mean, my face isn’t really soft or anything, uh...” He chews on his lip, trying to think of soft things to offer up in his place, and suddenly Mike's hand is back on his cheek, Mike's--

\--thumb is on his _lip_ \--

“Don't chew on that, dude, you’ll make it bleed again,” Mike says sternly, and blinks. “Wow, your lips are really soft.”

Aha _ahhhh_ okay, Chuck is officially Being Weird now and it needs to stop immediately, he _can't_ think about Mike that way because aside from the best friend issue Mike is _really vulnerable_ right now and Chuck is the only one who can fix him. It would be so easy to use that to take advantage of him and that would be horrible and Chuck won't do it and _why is Mike rubbing his thumb back and forth_ , that is _not helping_.

Chuck can’t talk without pulling away from Mike’s hand on his face.  That shouldn’t really be a problem, he _should_ pull away, but instead here he is, sitting there paralyzed as Mike’s thumb rubs slowly back and forth against his lower lip.

And then Mike’s eyes flick up to Chuck’s face, and he sits back abruptly and pulls his hand away.  

“Sorry, dude,” he says.  Chuck is still staring at him, speechless and red in the face; Mike hunches in on himself a little bit and offers, “...you’ve got really soft skin.”  And then frowns at himself and says “--no, that’s weird too.  Jeez, I can’t remember how I used to talk to people, ha--haha.”

It's not a happy laugh, and it brings back the familiar ache in Chuck’s chest. He swallows to push the feeling down and tries on a smile. “I dunno, Mikey, when we were kids you definitely didn’t bother to watch your mouth.”

Mike studies him for a minute, eyes intent. Chuck tries not to shrink under his gaze. Did that sound like a mean thing to say? Mike sounded upset, Chuck had to say _something,_ but that sounded really nasty and--

“Is it okay, though?”

Chuck isn't quite sure what he means--assumes the talking thing. “Yeah, dude, you've always been really--straightforward. And, um, if you have kind of lost a, a social filter, maybe, you'll get it back as--” _as you get used to being a_ person _instead of a weapon again, no, don't say that_ , “--as we fix things and you… get used to stuff again.” No, that didn't work, Mike's still looking uncertain. Chuck runs a hand through his (freshly Mike-combed) hair and huffs at himself. “It's really okay, dude, I don't mind. Don’t worry about…’sounding wrong’ or whatever, just keep talking to me, okay?”

That works; Mike nods, relaxing. Then he hesitates. “And the touching thing. Is that still okay?”

Ahahaha oh god. “Oh, you, you wanted to--”

“No, I mean, not right now,” Mike says, and shrugs. “Just, should I--not?”

Chuck shakes his head quickly, an automatic response to that lost look creeping back into Mike's eyes. “No, it's fine.” Oh god, what is he _saying_. No, stop, it's fine! He'll be fine. Chuck can control himself. If Mike wants to try out more textures, more...feelings, Chuck can be his subject, that's, that's fine. That's not a problem. (Oh god oh god he's lying to himself this is going to be a _disaster_.  He absolutely can _not_ start thinking about all the...textures and feelings he has to offer, holy crap it’s definitely time to stop.)

Mike's smiling at him, puzzled and amused. “You're red again,” he says, in that slow, methodical tone he’s been using since Chuck started debugging him.  Working through the facts, one after another.  “...That's...cute?”  He frowns.  “--But are you sure it's okay?  You’re okay, right?”

“It's fine,” Chuck babbles, “totally fine, not an issue, hahaha!” Then he hides his face in his hands and giggles hysterically for a moment, because _cute_ augh, _why_?!

Chuck being a flailing idiot right now is probably only confirming Mike's concerns. He's got to pull it together. He takes a deep breath and puts his hands on the table, doing the best imitation of calm and coherent he can manage. “It's not--that's not--you’re good, I’m good, we’re _good_. You don't need to worry about that.”

“I don't want to do anything you don't like, dude,” Mike says cautiously.

Chuck has to swallow another surge of slightly hysterical laughter. Yeah, not liking it is _really_ not the issue. “That's not a problem,” he says, more firmly. “If you do, I'll just tell you and you'll stop.”

Mike nods fast. “Totally!  Yeah, just--just say the word, bro.” He pauses, frowns slightly. “So...did you not want me to touch your face? It seemed like maybe--and I kept doin’ it. Sorry.”

“No, it's--it's fine, I'm just oily and gross, like I said, and--” _and I didn't want to watch you notice and pull away and look disgusted_ \--

“No you're not,” Mike says. “You're not gross at all. I like touchin’ you.”

...okay. That is sure a thing Mike just said. Chuck’s face is on fire, and all he can do is stare.

Mike looks down at the table, rubs a finger against the scuffed and scratched laminate. “It's nice,” he says quietly. “Reminds me this is real. You're real. Really here, not just some kind of...something I made up.  Or they made up.  You’re really here.” He looks up again and smiles, bright and warm and tired. “I like being here, dude.  Like being around you, it’s...really good. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Chuck says around the lump in his throat, and leans around the corner of the table to hug him hard. Mike hugs back after a second--he's not quite used to casual affectionate contact yet, but he clearly likes it. Chuck tries not to think about how when they were kids, Mike was always the one throwing an arm across his shoulders, hugging him randomly, trying to pick him up and carry him around as he squawked in annoyance… Pointless to remember when it just makes him angry all over again.

“It's okay,” Chuck says when he pulls back. “You can touch me whenever you want. Just. Um. Warn me first.”

Mike brightens again and nods firmly. “I can do that.”

\--

And he does, over the next few days.  The emergency programming sessions get less frequent as the mental glitches and the neurofeedback get less intense and more manageable, and Mike celebrates his newfound functional senses mostly by testing them out on the nearest person available, which is basically always Chuck.  Staring at him and touching his arms and back and occasionally, Chuck is pretty sure, sniffing him--which can’t be the greatest thing to smell down here, but he never actually catches Mike doing it and there’s no good way to bring up _hey I think you might have been sniffing me and that’s one of those things people don’t really do…?_  Mostly Mike just enjoys the texture of his skin or his shirt or his hair.

...which is awkward, like... _incredibly_ awkward, but he’s so openly happy about it, it’s hard to care.  It’s not like he’s using it as an excuse to perv on Chuck (why would he) he just...really missed being able to feel stuff.  So it’s fine.

(It’s not completely fine, but Chuck’s stupid problems are all on him and he’s not going to make Mike stop doing something he enjoys just because of a couple of dumb hangups and a stupid, persistent crush on Chuck’s part.)

The rest of the time, Mike mostly spends recuperating.  His body is tough, tougher than any normal human’s, but the amount of neglect and abuse Kane Co. has put him through is--geez.  He’s got basically no body fat over the perfect, artificial muscle, his face looks gaunt and hollow and he’s covered in scrapes and bruises.  

A couple of the synthesized bones in his fingers are subtly warped and cracked, too, where he’s hit things so hard even Deluxe polymers couldn’t stand up to it.  Chuck drags out his stolen maintenance kit for those, and Mike puts his head back and stares hard at the ceiling as Chuck opens up the maintenance seams in his hands.  

"They didn't give you any weapon systems," Chuck realizes as he works, and bends Mike's fingers for him, testing the flex of the artificial muscle.  "I didn't put one in your plans, but it should have been pretty simple for somebody to synthesize one for you."

"Mm," says Mike.  Chuck glances up, sees the hard, tired look in Mike's eyes, and shuts up.

He works in silence for another long, silent stretch of time before Mike speaks again, quiet and almost reluctant.

"...so," he says, and his fingers twitch a little bit under Chuck's hands.  "So you, uh...you have one?  A...weapons system."

"I was supposed to be a combat unit too," Chuck says, a little bit more tersely than he means to.  "They failed--I failed, but that doesn't mean I didn't have the plans for it."

"Mm," says Mike again, but softer this time.  There's another wait, and then he breathes out and admits, "...keep forgetting.  That you're one too, a, uh...a special unit."

"Cybernetically-enhanced combat specialist," Chuck corrects, with excessive, pretentious precision.  "Use the correct designation, geez."

"Ha!  Right."  Mike sits back, smiling crookedly.  Another silence.  "I'm...glad I can forget," he says.

"You're what?"  Forgetting things has been the thing that frustrates Mike the most, ever since Chuck recovered him.  Chuck squints at him.  "Dude, what are you talking about?"

"I'm glad I can forget," Mike says again.  "That you're a...cyber...what you said.  I can't tell, a lot of the time, even though I know.  They didn't..."

He looks away, but Chuck gets what he means.  Nobody could mistake Mike for a normal guy, not right now.  Not even after all the work they've done to fix the things Kane Co. inflicted on him.  He looks normal sometimes, but as soon as you spend some time talking to him, looking at him closely, it's clear there's something about him that's...wrong.  Different.

"I tried to make the operations pretty subtle," he says, and bends over Mike's hand again, so he doesn't have to look Mike in the eyes.  Traces his hands over the technology he painstakingly planned, the circuitry he mapped out, the prosthesis he designed.  "I, uh.  I didn't...want them used like this."  Mike is silent overhead, but his fingers twitch.  Chuck swallows hard.  "I never should’ve asked you to volunteer," he says, pathetically small and weak but utterly heartfelt.  "I'm--I'm so sorry, dude, I didn't know--I should've known, but I thought--"

"Not your fault," says Mike, and Chuck slumps all over in relief even as something hot and tight and horrible rises up in his chest.

"But I came up with the programming, I designed the--"

"You didn't program the overrides," Mike says.

"No, I--I didn’t, but--"

"...they overrode you," Mike says, suddenly louder, like he just remembered.  "When I called you, you had new scars and you looked upset and they overrode you and made you tell me things were great.  I _believed_ you.  I--how did I not--"  This time his hand does more than twitch--it curls into a fist, shaking.  "They were already hurting you," he says.  “Weren't they?"

 _Hurting you_ makes it sound more dramatic, more terrible than it was--like Chuck's surgeries and overrides were anything like as bad as the ones they made Mike go through.  Sure, he didn't want the last couple, and he could feel the things they were forcing into his skull, could see what all of them did and couldn't stop them, sure he still gets nightmares sometimes, but it wasn’t... _that_ bad.  It could have been way worse.

He tries to express all of this to Mike, downplaying as much as possible.  Mike doesn't need to worry about how stressful and scary those last few weeks were, he's got enough crap to deal with right now.  By the way Mike watches him, face hard but eyes soft, tense and quiet and listening hard, Chuck doesn't have him fooled.

"I probably could've broken us both out," Mike says quietly.  "I still thought--I believed--" he stops, lips thin.  "I was an idiot," he finishes.  "They told me you got moved to another project.  What did...what did he really do?  To you?"

"Gave up on making a profit off me and pulled me off the project."  Chuck can still remember the way Kane looked at him, that brief few minutes where they were face to face.  The disdain and disgust in those black, shark-like eyes were palpable.   _Weak, pathetic, failed to meet company standards_.  

Chuck busies himself with straightening the bones of Mike's pinky finger instead of meeting his too-soft stare.  Kane had pulled him from the program, told the techs _well at the very least we can test the limits of this so-called_ supersoldier tech _before this one burns out._ "They just did some tests on my upgrades and then threw me out," he finishes, a little belatedly.

"How did you get down here?"

"The other techs."  He can't explain exactly what they did for him without explaining the brutal stress-testing that came before that, and he doesn't want to see the look that would put on Mike's face.  It’s not like Chuck remembers most of it anyway.  He'd collapsed at some point, god only knows when--he made it more than 24 hours, he thinks.  More than 48 even, maybe.  It's amazing what the combination of cyborg enhancements and pure, gut-wrenching terror for your life can do for your endurance.  

He doesn't remember falling, but he remembers the technicians, the guys he spent years training with in R&D, pulling him up from his exhausted, trembling heap on the floor and whispering _play along_.  He'd let them lift him, hung there limp and listened to them flat-out lie to the ultra-elites who were guarding the room.   _He's drained, can't you tell?  Look at him, he's burned out enough he might as well be dead._   _The tech in his body needs to be carefully disposed of before he shuts down and auto-destructs._

They'd dragged him out from under Security's noses, forced artificial nutrition down his throat until the calories started to convert, until his upgrades kicked back online.  Then they'd shoved a maintenance kit into his hand, uploaded a map of the access tunnels and told him to run.

Like before, Mike gets the abridged version.  He still whistles, impressed.

"That's crazy brave," he says.  "Did...would they get in trouble?"

"No idea, bro."  Chuck's worried about that a lot since he came down.  But...would the ultra-elites really bother to remember the faces of the guys who dragged him out of the room?  Would they want to report to Kane that they were the ones who let the experimental combat unit be "disposed of" without salvaging Chuck's parts for scrap?  He's willing to bet the guys who helped him managed to fade away into obscurity, heads down, faceless in the crowds of brilliant, under-appreciated minds that power Kane Co.  "Those look good.  Bend your fingers?  Straighten.  Does that feel right?"

"You're asking the wrong guy," Mike points out, half-laughing--flexes and folds his hand, wiggling his fingers.  "Feels okay.  Doesn't hurt or anything."

"Cool."  Chuck presses the seams of the skin back together; the surgical scars close back up, leaving Mike's hand almost unmarked.  "I'm gonna go watch a movie.  You wanna watch a movie, dude?"

"What, like an instructional video?"  Mike's nose wrinkles.  "Why?"

"No, a _movie._ "  Despite himself, Chuck has to grin a little bit.  "Oh my god, I forgot you've never seen a movie!  We're gonna watch _The Day The Clouds Came Down._  Come on dude, this is gonna blow your mind."  And then, as a brilliant idea occurs to him, "--we can make popcorn!"

"Watch _what?"_ Mike says, bewildered but grinning, and lets Chuck pull him to his feet.  "Make what?"

"I'll show you!" And it's like a weight is lifted off of his shoulders, because--jeez, because Mike doesn't blame him.  He should, he has every right to, but he _doesn't_ and this is a beautiful day.  "You're gonna love it, trust me."

"I do," says Mike, and closes the distance between them to put an arm around Chuck's shoulders, almost tentative, pressing warm and solid against him, hip to hip.  "You know I do."

\--

It's been a little bit more than a week since Chuck found Mike, when Chuck decides it's time for a test.

For the past three days, he's attacked the sensory section of Mike’s programming like Jacob pulling weeds in his garden, uprooting unwanted connections and deleting with a vengeance.  Mike walked into the kitchen this morning and wrinkled up his nose and went “...what--ugh.” and that’s good enough proof for Chuck.  It's time.

So he sits Mike down at the bar, goes into the kitchen and digs through Jacob’s endless containers of leftover produce.  Mike is still sitting where Chuck left him when he comes back; he squints a little bit dubiously at the vegetable Chuck picked out.

“Try this,” Chuck says.  “Just a little bit at a time, okay?”

“Huh?”  Mike smiles and takes the pepper, turning it over in his fingers.  “Uh...okay?  Why?”

“You’ll see when you eat some,” says Chuck, and grins as Mike shrugs and nips off the end of the pepper.  He chews for a second, and then, slowly, his brows furrow.

“It’s...hot,” he says, and swallows.  “...Wow, geez, that kinda burns!”

“That’s--yeah!”  Chuck sits forward, grinning now--Mike is smiling back at him, eyes going wide, delighted and amazed even while the spiciness of the pepper makes his cheeks turn kind of red and his eyes go wet.  “That’s how spicy tastes!  Deluxe didn’t have any, but there’s some _really_ hot food down here.  I figured we should try something kinda mild the first time.”

“Wow,” says Mike again, and nibbles cautiously at the pepper again.  “Huh.  Can we try the hotter ones?”

“Nnnot yet.”  Because it’s great, watching Mike actually taste again, but the last thing Chuck wants to do is give him something actually spicy and make him puke like Chuck did.  “Let’s work up to that, okay bro?”

“Sure,” says Mike, and takes a slightly less cautious bite of the pepper.  “That’s good though!  What else you got?”

“Here.”  Chuck picks up the next plate; it’s a cluster of Jacob’s grapes, ripe and crisp, the best ones he could find.  “Try these.”

Chuck waits until he's absolutely certain Mike's sense of taste and smell are fully online again before he gives him chocolate. It's hard to come by in Motorcity, but unknown in Deluxe, and he wants to see Mike's face when he tastes it for the first time.

Mike squints at the little square dubiously.

“Try it, bro,” Chuck says, grinning. “Just a bit!” he adds, when Mike seems ready to pop the whole piece in his mouth. “To make sure you like it first.”

Mike nods and obediently nips off a corner. His eyes widen immediately, and keep widening until they're completely round. “Whoa.” He tastes it a minute before swallowing. “What the heck, that's really… different. Good, wow. It's sweet! And… stuff.” He frowns. “Are there words for this stuff and I've just forgotten them?”

“Uh, I don't think so, bro.” Chuck thinks about the flavor testing they've done and what Mike's said about it. “You know bitter and salty and spicy, that stuff. Pretty sure that's mostly the words we have, besides like ‘rich’ and…’dark’ and stuff. But hey, that's good!  I’m not trying to make you good at describing food, I just want you to taste it.  So, uh...you like it?”

Mike grins. “Yeah! Can I have the rest?”

“Yeah, dude, I gave it to you!”

Mike puts the rest of the square in his mouth right away, of course. Chuck knows all about stuffing your face with tasty things, okay, but sometimes you have to _savor_ something. Mike doesn't chew, though, so he must be letting it melt, which is better. He sits there on the sofa, leaning back, eyes closing to fully concentrate on the taste. His face is soft and open and he looks pretty much blissful. Chuck has to swallow, but he’s smiling because this is what he wanted, Mike _should_ feel good things, this is exactly right.

Then Mike sighs softly and his body… shifts a little, in a way that makes Chuck suddenly aware that oh, wow, Mike _really_ likes chocolate, apparently.  Okay.  Chuck abruptly doesn't know where to put his eyes or hands or--oh god, what does he _do?_ He can’t get up and go, Mike would ask why--but he can’t _stay,_ he can’t just sit next to Mike while he’s--while he’s got--

...this is fine.  It’s okay, this is okay.  Mike’s having a _perfectly reasonable_ reaction to a strongly positive stimulus after a really long time without any pleasant sensations at all, and Chuck’s acting like a big pervy idiot.  He just has to chill out, and Mike will eventually--the stimulus will-- _god._   _Positive stimuli.  Bet he could use some more of those right now_ holy crap _no, stop that_ NO.

“So!” Chuck says, breathless and too high. “You like chocolate, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mike says without opening his eyes. His voice is deeper than usual, warm and a little bit rough. “Yeah, man, it's _great_.”

\--

Chocolate tastes _amazing_. It's weird that there aren't better words for it than ‘sweet’, because it's way more interesting than just that, but Mike's relieved that this time the language is actually missing instead of it being one more thing that got messed up in his head.

It feels good, tasting something so nice. Almost feels like… huh. He's not really sure. Forgotten, probably. He feels good, though, his body feels nice. Not just the absence of pain and the feeling of things working right, it's more than that. He thinks the chocolate is having some kind of ...chemical effect, maybe. Chuck wouldn't have given it to him if it was a problem, though, it must be supposed to feel like this.

...which is awesome.  It’s just really cool of him to want Mike to feel good.  Geez, he’s got the best friend ever.

Mike opens his eyes and grins up at Chuck, who’s gone red again for some reason. He’s looking off into the distance and he’s all red, but when Mike follows where he’s looking he doesn’t see anything there.  Chuck didn’t used to blush nearly this often when they were kids, Mike is pretty sure--maybe there's a glitch in _his_ code somewhere? Except, no, he's really good at that stuff, he'd have fixed it already if there were. His code is fine, anyway, Mike's the one who screwed his up so badly.

Chuck has a funny sort of shaky smile on and yeah he’s definitely avoiding looking at Mike. Mike sits up straight, a little concerned now.

“Dude,” he says, and Chuck jumps.  “Chuckles, everything okay?”

“Ahaha yeah, totally, everything's fine!”

Well, no, obviously not, but he doesn't sound upset, either. It's more like… a little nervous, yeah, but more-- _embarrassed_ , that's what the look is! ...Which means Mike might as well give up on figuring out the problem, because the things that embarrass Chuck mystified him even before they started piling patches and “fixes” into Mike’s brain. If he didn’t get it then, he’s pretty much definitely not going to get it now, and Chuck’s probably not going to want to tell him.  Shoot.

A little dejected, he looks down at his lap and gets distracted. The crotch of his pants looks different in a way he remembers correlates with a warm edgy feeling, which, oh, actually matches up with the sensation he's got. Huh. He vaguely remembers--pleasure? _Something_ good--used to be involved when that happened, but when he thinks about how there’s just a too-loud foreign blare of programmed thoughts.  Deluxe white and blue on a smiling man holding hands with a smiling woman and something about… babies? He's never had a girlfriend.  Never even thought about someday bringing babies into the picture, beyond the awkward, half-remembered days in Health and Procreation lectures.  Think, this has happened before.  There’s the good feeling, and then he would...and then... _man, woman, child.  White and blue, WHITE AND BLUE._

There's something wrong with that thought, even beyond the fakeness of the ideas somebody put in his head.  Some part of him that doesn't think an imaginary Deluxian girlfriend has anything to do with this feeling. He queries that part and gets a flash of blond hair and long, big-knuckled fingers. Chuck? He glances over at Chuck, who still isn't looking at him. Does Chuck have something to do with this?

He doesn't really look like it. He looks more like he wants to be somewhere else. That kinda stings.  Maybe he’s doing something...wrong, somehow?  He didn’t really try to do anything, but a lot of the things he just accidentally does upsets Chuck these days.

Well, it’s pretty easy to find out if he’s the problem.

“Sorry,” he offers.  Chuck twitches.

“S-sorry for what, bro?” he says, voice high, not looking over.

Mike swallows.  The taste lingers, but the other feeling, the good feeling he can’t place, fades away.  He waves at his lap. “The thing that happened?”

Chuck makes a choking noise and hides his face in his hands. “Oh my god, Mikey, the _thing_ that _happened_ \--” He stops abruptly, hands dropping, and turns to Mike with his mouth open. It kinda makes Mike want to touch his lips again, but Chuck can’t really talk with Mike’s hands on his face and it sounds like maybe this is another important thing Mike’s forgotten about. “The--the thing--Mike, you remember, um, you know what that is, right?”

He's still really red, but he also looks worried now. Geez, is it really a big deal?  Feeling good is nice, but it’s not necessary.  Mike is...fully aware of that, after the past couple of months.  You don’t need to feel good to be alive.

But Chuck looks upset, like it maybe _is_ a big deal, somehow.  Mike considers the question. “You mean, like, can I name the anatomy? Yeah, you want the slang or the--”

“No!” Chuck yelps, and then clears his throat. “No, I mean. Um. You, your sensory feed was pretty messed up for a while, including tactile stuff, so, uh…”

He seems to fumble, so Mike steps in to help. “Yeah, I almost forgot about it. This thing, I mean. It used to happen sometimes, but it's… been a while.  Not since after my first couple of neuro implants, I think?”

Chuck opens his mouth and closes it, nods. He sighs and mumbles, “Yeah, I bet. Well. It'll… the rest will come back to you. Um. It's good everything’s...back online.”

Mike's not sure whatever just happened is a necessary function--he went years without it, even before the first override--after he joined the cadets it didn’t really happen as much and...and wasn’t allowed, it was inappropriate on company property to...do whatever he was doing.  He got in trouble, he thinks, a couple times.  And then after the neurosurgeries and implants started and he got his first programming sessions they kinda stopped.

It didn’t affect performance, so Mike didn’t really think about it.  But even though it’s not important, Chuck wants to fix it.  Wants to fix everything, not just the really important stuff.  He’s just--a really good dude!  A good friend, even when Mike accidentally embarrasses him for some reason.  Mike grins at him for a second, and then gives in to the impulse to sling an arm over his shoulders.

“All thanks to you, buddy.”

“ _Hngk?_ ” Chuck says faintly. Wow, the red goes all the way down his neck, geez, what did Mike do?

He lightens the weight of his arm, getting ready to take it back if the touching is the problem. “You're the one fixing me,” he says cautiously. “So, new stuff that comes back online is thanks to you.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Chuck says, “ahaha! Yeah, right, sure no problem!” Rubbing his face, he slumps against the back of the couch, apparently unbothered by Mike's arm, so Mike leaves it where it is.

The thing that happened has stopped happening, the feeling has gone away. It was a good feeling, but this feels good too, sitting here with Chuck, and it doesn't make Chuck blush or get really flustered and uncomfortable, so this is better. Mike sits quietly with the warmth of his best friend against his side and the memory of chocolate on his tongue. It makes him smile, and he doesn't have to stop himself now, he can look as happy (or angry, or sad, but right now he's happy) as he wants. He leans into Chuck, smiles, and lets himself close his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chuck is glossing over his Supersoldier Program experience (and the aforementioned "stress-testing") quite a bit, even via the narration. For a little bit more on the topic/how he got to Motorcity, jump forward to the next fic in the series--consider it a flashback, anime-style. ;D


	5. get down, tiny!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TARGET ACQUIRED, his brain snarls, and for the first time since his first mission Mike snarls along with it. _NEUTRALIZE_.

It’s been a long time since Chuck lived in the same place as Mike.  He forgot a lot, like...like how even when the only clothes Mike has in the world are a plain, old T-shirt and a pair of heavily-patched jeans, he still takes them off and hangs them neatly in his closet at night.  Like how he gets up early, how his idea of blowing off steam is working out or doing crazy stunts.  Like how restless he gets at the slightest hint of something like peace or relaxation.

“I’m telling you,” he’s saying now, instead of chilling out like a normal person, “--I just gotta get out and do something!  I’m gonna malfunction locked up in here.”  

...and that’s the problem.

“People don’t malfunction,” Chuck corrects, and Mike groans and rolls his eyes.  The room he’s been sleeping in most nights is actually a little bit bigger than the one Chuck is in, not that Chuck minds--but the way Mike looks around at the walls, it might as well be a cramped jail cell.  

“Whatever,” Mike says.  “Even if somebody notices, which they’re not gonna--”

“Dude, they _will_!”  Chuck rakes a hand through his hair, frustrated.  “Mike, if you go out there now people are going to _know_ there’s something up.  If they find out what--if they find out who you are--”

“--then I’ll _handle_ it,” Mike promises.  “Buddy, come on.  I’m gonna--go nuts, if I have to look at the same couple rooms for another day.  We’re not in Deluxe anymore, there’s-- _stuff_ out there!  Stuff to see, stuff from before the dome, stuff Kane hasn’t--” his face twitches, a sudden, sharp wince.  “--ruined.”

Oh, that’s not fair.

“...Mike,” Chuck starts, gentler this time, but Mike stands up and folds his arms, pacing the room in fast, unhappy strides.  “Look, bro, I just...want you to be safe about this.”

“I’m not good at that,” Mike says, half a joke and half a plea.  “Chuckles, seriously.  I can’t take this anymore.  I can’t.  It’s too...small.”  

For a second he stares at the walls around him and his eyes are wide, his whole body is pulled in tight.  

_Don’t don’t don’t put me back in I don’t want--no no no--_

Mike doesn’t exactly jump when Chuck puts a hand on his arm, but he does twitch, a full-body jolt.  He resurfaces most of the way from wherever he went in his head, but his eyes look darker, somehow.  Tired.  

“...you’re not gonna let me go,” he says.  “Are you?”

“I…”  dammit, he looks so _defeated,_ exhausted and defiant.  He’s all...shut down.  Blank-faced.  Waiting for orders he knows he’s not going to like.  “Mike, listen--”

“I want to get out of here,” Mike says again.  “I _need_ to get out of here.”

“I--I know, but--”

Mike’s expression darkens at the tone of Chuck’s voice--he looks away sharply, muscles working in his jaw.  Chuck crumples a little bit inside.  But Mike being mad at him here is better than Mike out in Motorcity, accused and cornered and _hurt._  

“If you go out there, people will recognize you,” he says, as firmly as he can.  “It’s a bad idea, it’s dangerous, and I don’t think you should go.”

“I--but--ugh, so what?!”  Mike jerks away from him abruptly, paces back and forth in fast, vicious circles.  His voice is rising, angrier now; Chuck’s heart pounds against his ribs, his stomach is a cold, hard knot.  “No, I don’t want to stay here!  I can’t just stay here, you can’t-- _make_ me, you don’t own me--nobody does!”

“I know I don’t!”   _Please don’t yell at me don’t, stop it stop it--_ Mike’s finally tired of him, done with him, he finally messed it up too badly to fix, stupid stupid _stupid--_  “Mike, just--bro, please, just listen for a second--”

“No!”  Mike slams a fist against the wall, eyes flashing and teeth bared--his fist leaves a dent in the wall, plaster crumbling away from his bandaged knuckles, but he doesn’t seem to notice.  “No!  I don’t have to do what you tell me anymore, I’m not--I’ve got your override, I-I could--”

They flinch back away from each other at almost the same moment.  Chuck is shaking, trembling despite himself, pinned back against the wall as far from Mike as he can go; Mike looks shocked and then pained and then _horrified_ , swallowing convulsively like he’s going to be sick.  “Sorry,” he says, and steps back--and again, almost staggering.  “No, no no I didn’t mean that, sorry--I wouldn’t, I won’t--”

“I--know,” says Chuck, but his voice cracks and he knows Mike hears the hesitation by the way he crumples, eyes dark and agonized.  “I know you wouldn’t, I’m--I don’t want to _make_ you do anything.  You’re...you’re safe, dude.”

“Sorry,” says Mike again, and reaches out like he’s not sure he’s allowed, curling a hand tentatively around Chuck’s shoulder, not pulling.  Settles down on the bed next to Chuck very slowly, kneeling on the creaky mattress, holding himself small and apologetic.  “My fault, dude, you--didn’t do anything, wasn’t you, I just--”  He huffs as Chuck wraps both arms around him, squeezing hard.  “I wouldn’t,” he says again, like he’s desperate for Chuck to know that.  “I’d never...sorry, sorry sorry.  I’m okay.  You okay?  Chuck, are you okay.”

Chuck can’t lift his face out of Mike’s shoulder.  He swallows hard, squeezes his eyes shut, and shakes his head.

Mike breathes out shaky against his hair; his arms rise, wrap around him and hold on tight.

“... _I got...scared,_ ” he says, like it hurts to admit, and his hand finds the back of Chuck’s neck, the curve of his skull, the shivering arch of his spine, rubbing in fast, shaky circles.  “I thought--it felt like--it’s not, though.  You’re not.”  He rocks a little bit back and forth, and he’s not mad any more, and he’s not yelling and he’s still here and he’s sorry, it’s okay.  It’s okay.  

“Don’t yell at me,” Chuck says, and he means it to be firm and steady, setting boundaries, calm and mature--instead it’s small and shaky and pathetic.  

“I won’t.”  Mike says again.  He steps back, pulls free and grabs Chuck’s arm as they step apart.  “I won’t make you--you won’t need this.”

The screen of Chuck’s weapons system clips through Mike’s fingers, jittering.  He didn’t even feel it engage, but he can feel it now.  Whirring inside his bones, hot against his skin.  Chuck swallows thickly, twitches his fingers, collapses the slingshot back into his arm.  Mike breathes out hard and shaky and looks up at him.

“You’re still freaked out,” he says.  “You weren’t scared when you were fixing me.”

“You--you didn’t yell at me, then,” says Chuck, and rubs his hand over the seam where his slingshot compacts, feeling the sting where his skin split.  “And--I _was_ , dude, I was freakin’ terrified.”

Mike pulls him in again, hugs him hard.  “ _You’re so brave, bro,_ ” he says, and Chuck shivers at the feeling of warm breath against his neck even as he has to laugh.  “No, you are.  You really are, Chuckles.”

“You’re hilarious,” says Chuck dryly.  “Yeah, that looked _real_ brave just now, sure.  Whatever you say.”

“Don’t do that, come on.”  Mike still isn’t letting go, and now that Chuck has _started_ noticing how close Mike’s lips are to his neck it’s really hard to stop.  He shifts his weight a little bit--Mike apparently doesn’t notice, because if anything, he holds on tighter.  “You’re great.”

“I-if you’re trying to butter me up so we can go out--and see Motorcity, I mean, uh--”

Mike snorts.  “Sure,” he says, and _still_ isn’t letting go.  “I mean, if it helps.”  Oh god, Chuck can feel Mike’s _heartbeat_.  The muscles in his arms.  The more Chuck thinks about it the more his skin goes tingly and the back of his neck feels hot, and it doesn’t feel _bad_ exactly, but it feels...dangerous.  This isn’t the first time in his life his heart has been beating so hard his hands shake, but it’s certainly the most memorable.

“Well, it’s, uh.  It’s...uh.”  Wow, holy crap, pull it together.  “It’s--working.  Fine, yeah, okay--sure.  Let’s go see Motorcity.”

Mike finally pulls away, this time to stare at Chuck’s face like he doesn’t believe his ears.  “Seriously?” he says.  “You said it was dangerous, are you gonna be okay?”  and then, fast on the heels of the words like it’s bursting out without his consent, “--oh man this is gonna be so cool!”

“It’s really not me I’m worried about!”  God, at least Mike’s finally not pressing up against him anymore, that was making it _really_ hard to think.  Chuck takes a couple of bracing breaths as Mike goes striding off across the room, pulling out another shabby white T-shirt that looks almost exactly like the one he’s got on and examining it critically.  “Look, you gotta promise me we’re gonna lay low out there, okay?  Mikey, _please._ ”

“Yeah, totally!”  Mike says absently, and makes a face at his own feet in their patched, hand-me-down socks.  “I need shoes.  And a new shirt!  And--”

“...this is a terrible idea,” Chuck says, but he can’t bring himself to say it loud enough for Mike to hear, any more than he can keep himself from smiling as Mike goes bouncing around the room, finger-combing his scrubby hair in the chipped mirror and then tucking and re-tucking his shirt.  “Mike-- _Mike_ , dude, calm down.”

“No can do, bro!”  Mike examines the tucked-in shirt in the mirror, snorts and then, in one seamless motion, strips his shirt completely off.  He digs through the closet with barely a wince for the enclosed space, apparently too excited to notice the way Chuck has gone as still as a mutant rat in Jacob’s headlights, round-eyed.  “Man, I’ve just got shirts, I feel like I need somethin’ else to go with it.  Like a jacket or something?”

“Mmhm,” says Chuck, and stares very resolutely up into the corner of the room instead of at the muscles bunching between Mike’s shoulder blades as he sorts through his very limited wardrobe.  

“Maybe Jacob has one,” Mike decides, and pulls a white T-shirt out of the closet.  It’s probably Chuck’s imagination, the way it pulls tighter across the shoulders and fits closer at his waist than the first shirt did.  Knowing that does _not_ make it any better.  “Dude, you okay?”

“Buh,” says Chuck, and then “Uh…” and then “Y-yeah.  Yeah I’m cool.  Let’s--Jacob!  Yeah, he might.  Dunno.”

Jacob does have a jacket, it turns out when they troop downstairs together to find him.  He’s up on a ladder, tuning up his enormous car, long gray hair braided with surprising expertise and arms covered in oil.  He listens to Mike’s over-energetic explanation with a bemused, almost fond look on his face, then nods a couple times and slides down the ladder.  

“Well, I ain’t got as many shoes as I got old clothes,” he says, “But we can take a look.  And the other stuff...huh.”  He squints at Mike, scrubbing at his hands with something strong-smelling and bright orange--the rag he’s using to clean his hands is rapidly turning black.  “...You’re pretty broad at the shoulders, but it oughta fit.”

“What should?” Mike asks, and Jacob grins, turns to his workbench and picks up his leather jacket.  

“...there,” he says, and swings it over Mike’s shoulders.  “That’s for you, kid.  Gets chilly down here, you gotta keep yourself warm or you’ll catch a cold.”

“Catch a…”  Mike’s nose wrinkles.  “Huh?”

“He means you’ll get sick,” Chuck explains, and shudders a little bit.  Getting sick is the _worst._  “Just put the jacket on, dude.”

“But…”  Mike reaches up and runs his fingers over one battered sleeve.  “...but it’s _yours._ ”

“It’s yours now,”  Jacob says firmly.

Mike stares at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, and then runs his hands over the sleeves again and smiles the brightest, most amazed smile Chuck has ever seen.  It’s practically blinding.  “ _Wow,_ ” he says.  “Wow!  Thanks!”

“No big deal,” says Jacob gruffly, and pats Mike on the back a couple of times.  “Take care of it, though.  It’s seen me through some stuff.”

“Yeah--yeah, totally!”  Mike pulls the jacket on, rolls his shoulders and then, almost like he’s not thinking about it, reaches up and pops the collar, running his thumbs over the bright orange stripes around the zipper.  “That’s so cool.”

He’s almost as enthused about the boots, when Jacob throws them down for him; old, worn things made of dark leather, with thick, heavy soles.  Mike picks them up and turns them over, fascinated, as Jacob goes bustling around gathering stuff to take into the city with them.  “These’ll work great,” he decides, and raises one foot, wiggling his toes and picking at the patched sock.  “These are pretty warm, but they’re not great for walking.”

“Walking?”  Jacob snorts and swings himself up onto the main platform, grunting as he hoists his weight up.  “We’re not walkin’ all the way to midtown, kid!  Get those boots on.  I’m gonna go get my newest batch of veggies.”

“We’re...not walking?”  Mike frowns, staring after him as Jacob bustles off to find his supplies.  “But you don’t have pods down here.  How are we gonna get there if it’s too far to walk?”

“We’re gonna drive,” Chuck says, resigned to his fate.  Mike turns and stares at him.  “Y’know, cars.  His car.  Sasquatch.”

“His--oh, _wow._ ”  Mike is grinning now, wider and wider, eyes round and wondering and bright.  “Oh _man!_ ”

“Yeah, they’re...they’re pretty cool,” Chuck agrees, because hey, he can appreciate a beautiful piece of engineering even if the beautiful engineering is being used in ways that make him want to cry or scream or possibly die.  “They’re _crazy_ dangerous, but--”

“You’ve been in one?”  Mike is practically vibrating.  “You’re--have you ever been piloted one?  How fast can they go?”

“Have I--?  No!  No, I’ve never driven one!”  and Mike is still looking at him expectantly, so-- “--I’ve just ridden with Jacob, and it was _nuts_ , completely insane--he went _three hundred_ miles per hour.   _Three hundred,_ Mike!  And my brain kept calculating the chances of us making the turns he was making and it was, like, less than 25% every time--I’ve never been that scared in my _life._ ”

“Three hundred,” Mike repeats, like that last part didn’t even register.  He’s still grinning.  “ _Wow._ ”

\--

Driving is ridiculously terrifying and exciting and wonderful and awful, and it makes Chuck feel kind of like the first time they switched on his conversion core after surgery and he got electrocuted and went into intense hypoglycemic shock at the same time.  Last time Jacob took him driving, he took a route with a deadfall in it, and Chuck doesn’t remember anything after that.  So yeah, driving is an enormous adrenaline rush, but he’s...not a fan.  

Also, there are only two seats.

Mike whoops and yells next to Chuck’s ear as Sasquatch goes flying over the winding Motorcity roads, laughing like a madman.  Chuck is also yelling, but his are higher and louder and considerably more terrified. Bundled uncomfortably into Mike’s lap with the seatbelt over both of them, he keeps accidentally elbowing Mike in the chest and side--Mike doesn’t seem to notice, any more than he noticed when they went over the first jump and Chuck grabbed hold of him and buried his face in Mike’s neck, eyes squeezed shut.  

It’s just--it’s too _much_ , they’re going so fast and every mile per hour they accelerate adds noticeably to the chances of them dying.  It would be so easy to topple off the side of the road at any second and Chuck’s brain can see _all of it._  With his eyes closed at least he can’t see every place and way they could die, his stupid enhanced brain picking every hairpin turn and barely-made jump out at superhuman speed and feeding them to his conscious mind in one unbroken stream of _danger alert DANGER alert THREATDETECTEDdamageimminent--_

__

“Chuck?”

Mike is shaking his shoulder.  He sounds breathless, exhilarated--his chest is heaving against Chuck’s side.  The rushing and shaking have stopped.  Chuck doesn’t remember most of what just happened, but he’s somehow unsurprised to find himself pressed up as close to Mike as he can, shaking like a leaf.  His head is spinning, his whole body feels weak and trembling, and his butt is bony enough it has to be digging into Mike’s leg, but--

“We’re alive,” Chuck says, startled stupid and grateful.  “Oh my god.”  
“Of course we’re alive, dude!”  Mike grins at him and wraps an arm awkwardly around his shoulders, squeezing comfortingly.  “That was amazing!  We gotta try driving one!”

His face is really close, his smile is wide and bright and glad. His chest and shoulders are really solid, and Chuck scrambles around in the seat, digs around by Mike’s hip and hastily undoes the seatbelt so he doesn’t have to think about all the places they were pressed together during the drive. Mike is still breathing hard, grinning, eyes wide and dark, occasionally laughing a breathless, wild laugh like he can’t contain it--if he notices the way Chuck scrambles off him and immediately tucks himself in small, he doesn’t say anything.

“Come on,”  Jacob says, and kicks open his driver’s side door, swinging himself out onto the side of the cab.  “We got business to do.”

“Yes _sir!_ ” says Mike, and Chuck hates getting back out of Sasquatch even more than getting up into her, but Mike is already sliding out and dropping down.  Chuck scrambles to follow him as Mike starts walking, gaping at main street like he’s completely transfixed and apparently completely forgetting his promise to lay low.  

By the time Chuck manages to get his feet under him and jog after Mike, Mike is standing in the middle of the street, staring around avidly at the milling sidewalks full of people and the graffitied, neon-lit buildings.

“It’s so... _bright,_ ” he says, wondering, and turns in a slow circle in the street, staring up at the buildings around them.  “Not like Deluxe was, it’s just...there’s so many colors down here, dang.”

“Don’t go wandering off now, kiddo,” says Jacob, not unkindly, and tugs on Mike’s elbow.  It takes two pulls before Mike even seems to notice he’s being led somewhere--he follows, looking vaguely bemused.  “I gotta make some deliveries.  We’re walkin’ this part.”

“Won’t--but couldn’t somebody...take your car?”  Chuck points out--Jacob raises a brow and jingles his keys.  

“Be pretty hard to steal,” he says.  “Even if they could start it, takes some doin’ to learn how to drive it.  Besides, ain’t that many cars down here.  Folks know who’s got which ones, if you’re around often enough.”

“Steal?”  Mike looks startled by the idea.  “What, they still do that down here?  Take stuff without permission?”

“Not so much any more,” Jacob says.  “I mean, I’m not gonna park my lady up there on a back road, I’m not gonna leave the keys in or the doors unlocked, but there’s nothin’ like four decades in a war to get people cooperative.  ‘Specially since I’ve taken down more than a couple bot attacks in my day.  But seriously, kid, you figure they don’t steal up there in Deluxe?”

“What?”  Mike snorts.  “No, of course they don’t.”

“Um.”  Chuck coughs.  “They...yeah dude, people do.  You know how many Kane Co. products go missing illegally every quarter?  Doesn’t really matter to Kane because he makes all the money and gets all the resources no matter what people buy, but they floated my R&D sector up to Financing once a month to run stats on all the new products--”

“People were _stealing_ stuff?”  Mike is apparently still stuck on that part, eyes round.  Chuck gives up on the explanation.

“ _Yes,_ dude.  Finance covers it up, most of the time.  Kane doesn’t know any better, and there’s no point getting a bunch of people arrested.  Most of the time it’s stuff people need that they don’t ‘qualify’ for, for whatever bullcrap reason--”

“Whoa,” says Mike.

“--but the point is, _how did you not know about this?_ ”  Chuck finishes, suddenly sidetracked.  “You were a cadet, you were a _commander_.”

“Keep it down a little,” Jacob says, casual but quiet.  Mike and Chuck both glance around, immediately guilty--nobody is looking at them.  Chuck lowers his voice and starts again.

“...you were in Security, dude, they arrest people all the time.  There’s _tons_ of crime in Deluxe, even if most of it is stupid little stuff that shouldn’t really be a crime.  How did you not hear about this?”

“Kane never put me on civic duty,” Mike says tensely.  “I was on the...underground offensive assignment, from day one.”

“Okay, okay you two.”  Jacob elbows his way between them, heading determinedly down the street and leaving Mike and Chuck to half-run hurriedly after him.  “That’s enough _big discoveries_ for one morning.  We came out here with a job to do, remember?”

“Right!”  Mike shoves his hands in the pockets of his new jacket, looking a little self-conscious and nervously eager to please.  “Yeah!  Uh...can I...help?  With your job?”

“Yeah,” says Jacob, and lifts one arm with knobbly bags of plants hanging on it.  “Do some carryin’ for me why don’t you?  You kids got younger knees than I do.”

\--

Mike can't stop staring. There are colored lights everywhere, lit up signs in windows and off the sides of buildings, shining blue and red and green and yellow and pink. Splashed over the walls of the buildings themselves are yet more colors, weird, skewed pictures of people and monsters and words, and the crowds of people passing by on the sidewalks don't even seem to notice, much less mind.

The people themselves are nothing like Deluxians, they wear dark and colorful clothes and crazy hair styles he's never seen before and bits of metal in their faces, some of them, things like earrings but in noses and eyebrows and lips. A lot of them don't even look at Mike, busy with their own business, but they're not averting their eyes, like folks in Deluxe learn to do, and they don't smile politely either if they do look up. Some of them sneer or grin or scowl as Chuck and Jacob pass, Mike trailing behind. They're not afraid of being reported for antisocial behavior, not wary of all the eyes on them. They don't need to be afraid, here.

“I’m headed in there,” Jacob says, and jerks his head toward a tall, creaky-looking building with neon bottles clinking over and over again over the door.  “Uh...you kids stay out here.”

“Aw,” says Mike, but Chuck makes a relieved kind of noise and nods.  “Okay, I guess.  Why--?”

Jacob is already gone.

“Come on,” Chuck says, and reaches out to tug a little on Mike’s arm again. His hand feels warm, but the touch is dulled through the leather of the jacket--Mike loves it, but he misses being able to feel things skin-to-skin.  “Let’s go this way, there’s this thing I guess people used to sit at and wait for buses.”

“Buses?”  Mike follows, letting himself be pulled, and is more than a little bit disappointed when Chuck lets go of him again, striding ahead on his longer legs.  He doesn’t walk very confidently, but he covers a surprising amount of ground.

“So I guess a bus is kind of like a car, but…”

He’s still talking, and Mike is listening with interest, when somebody to his right goes “Hey!  Hey, hot stuff!”  

It’s loud, and sudden, and Mike jumps hard and whips around to find the source of the noise.  It’s a guy standing on the corner of the street, leaned up against the wall.  He grins when Mike looks at him, and Mike--doesn’t know what kind of look that is.  Definitely a smile, but-- “Yeah, you in the tight shirt!”

“Uh...yeah?”  Mike hazards, and then jumps as a hand closes really tight around his wrist.

“No,” says Chuck firmly, and starts walking.  

“Dude, I think he was talking to me,” Mike protests--Chuck mumbles something too quiet to make out and walks even faster.  “Do you know him?” And then, glancing down at his chest, frowning, “--I mean, maybe he wasn’t talking to me, I guess.  My shirt’s not all _that_ tight, right?”

“He does that to everybody,” says Chuck, whose nose and cheeks are going red.  “He just likes to hang out around the bars and--don’t listen to him, okay?”

“Why?”

“God,” says Chuck.  “Just--he--he’s trying to get you to--do something for him.”

“He was?”  It’s weird that Chuck knows that, since he doesn’t seem to like the guy much--maybe he used to know him?  Mike shakes his head a little, trying to sort through the options, the possibilities, and then comes to the conclusion; “So I _should_ go talk to him?  We’ve got time, I could help--”

“No!”  Chuck yelps, like the idea is scary somehow.  He seems to notice the way the sudden shout sends alarm bells ringing in Mike’s head, even though Mike _knows_ he controls the flinch--his hand softens a little bit on Mike’s wrist and he lowers his voice again.  “...Mikey, no.  He wanted you to do something...gross.  He just likes embarrassing people, okay?  He’s a jerk.  Just ignore him.”

“Mm.”  Mike frowns, considering this.  He’s no stranger to people being jerks, although he’s still not really sure how this qualifies.  But Chuck seems pretty sure, and...not like he’s guessing.  Huh.  “...he’s done it to you?  Yelled at you?”

“You just have to ignore him,” Chuck mumbles again, but he doesn’t answer the question.  There’s something about the way his head drops and his shoulders hunch, he looks...smaller, pulled in tight like he doesn’t want to be seen.  Unhappy and embarrassed.  Mike stares at him, processing, frowning.

“I’m gonna go make him stop,” he decides, and turns back around.  

Chuck goes “what?” and then “whoa!” and then “Mike--Mike, no!  Dude!” as Mike starts to march back toward the guy yelling on the street corner, fists clenched determinedly.  Streetcorner guy is drinking something, not looking Mike’s way--a couple of ladies in glittery dresses and a skinny guy in a big jacket all do kind of the same thing Chuck did as streetcorner guy yells something at them; hunching shoulders, tight frowns.  Mike walks faster.  

“Mike, _stop!_ ”

Chuck’s been talking to him for a while, Mike is aware--but there’s a note of real panic to his voice when he says “ _stop_ ”, hard and urgent like something is scaring him.  Mike comes to a very abrupt halt, so sharply Chuck almost runs into his back.

“What?” he says, and blinks hard, trying to resist the glimmer of combat protocols lighting up in the back of his mind.  “He’s ticking you off, he’s making you feel bad, he’s being a jerk.  He should stop.  I should stop him.”

It seems pretty logical to him, laid out fact by fact like that, but Chuck groans and grabs his other arm to pull him back around again, turning his back on the guy.  “What were you gonna do, dude?”

Mike frowns, not really getting the question.  “...stop him.”

“Yeah, but how?”  Chuck presses.  “Your eyes are glowing, Mikey, your programming is doing-- _something_ , I don’t know what, but--what were you going to do to make him stop?”

“I--”  Mike’s head hurts. He doesn’t like this, the questions, being stopped from doing what he knows he should be doing.  It doesn’t feel good, and he was just getting used to feeling good again.  “Just-- _stop_ him!  I was just gonna--make him stop, I dunno!  Whatever I needed to do, I guess!”

“Hey!  Hey, hey.”  Chuck’s hands grip his wrists, grounding.  “Dude, Mike!  We’re good, okay?  I’m good.  Are you?”

Mike opens his mouth to snap--stops.  Breathes.

“...yeah,” he says.  He’s with friends, he’s free, he’s safe.  He’s not being interrogated by a superior officer, he’s talking to his best friend, it’s _okay._  “I’m good.  Why are you freaking out?  What did I do?”

From the way Chuck sort of jumps at that, he wasn’t expecting Mike to notice he was freaking out--which is dumb, it’s pretty easy to tell when Chuck is freaking out.  Mike waits patiently, focusing on Chuck’s face, letting the background whir of _make him stop, make him stop make him stop_ die away bit by bit.  Trying to remember how to read Chuck’s face like he used to be able to.  It’s like trying to relearn how to read English, and it occupies him until finally--

“...we’re...not normal.  Anymore,” Chuck says, very softly.  He’s not looking Mike in the eyes.   _We,_ not _you._  Huh.  “I mean, when somebody yells, or, or something happens, the first thing I want to do--Mike, the tech I’ve got in _one_ of my arms could…” he swallows really hard, and his face is all gray; he finishes at almost a whisper.  “... _Kane Co. wasn’t looking for combat units that would leave survivors, dude_.”

Mike thinks about that.  About the way his mind went sharp and focused, _make him stop_.  Like a mission.  He would’ve asked first.  Told the guy to stop.  And if he didn’t comply…

“...Mike?”

Chuck is watching him, still pale as ash, scared.  Mike breathes.  Feels the trace of a stutter left over from the people who wanted him to be a weapon.  

“You thought I was gonna hurt him,” he says, just to be clear, and Chuck hesitates and then closes his eyes really tight and nods once.  Mike thinks about that some more.  “I mean, only if he put up a fight.”

Chuck’s eyes snap open.  “Mike!”

“I know!  I know, I’m not saying--look, you’re right.  I was...ugh, it--disproportionate response, miscalculated the situation.”  He stops, hating the taste of the words in his mouth, then pushes on.  “But that guy is making people miserable!  He’s making _you_ \--”

“Don’t worry about me, dude,” Chuck says, a little too fast.  “I can take care of myself, okay?”

Mike...doesn’t answer that one.  He knows he’s not the only cyborg here, but Mike is...a combat unit, optimized for combat, and whatever they did to Chuck, Mike still can’t see him as anything but himself.  Tall and skinny and drawn in small, frowning unhappily because Mike was about to pick a fight.  He’s not helpless or anything, obviously Mike doesn’t think that, but he still needs to be protected.  

“You shouldn’t--”

Chuck frowns at him.  “I can _take care of myself,_ Mikey!  If--if I need a fight started, I’ll start it myself!”

The idea of Chuck starting a fight is so unexpected, Mike snorts.  “So why didn’t you?”

“Why--why didn’t I what?”

“Start a fight!”  Mike punches Chuck on the shoulder a couple of times, careful to pull it to less than his original strength.  Chuck is still half-smiling like he thinks MIke is making a joke.  “I’m serious, dude.  You don’t like it when he does that, right?  Tell him so!”

“He doesn’t _care,_ ” Chuck says, like he’s explaining something really simple to somebody kinda dumb, and okay, that stings a little bit.

“I know,” Mike says, echoing the tone back at him, and Chuck blinks and then flushes a little bit.  “Some people don’t get the message when you talk nice to ‘em, sometimes you gotta fight!”

“No,” says Chuck flatly, “Mike, I _can’t_.”

There’s a heavy note of finality in his voice.  Mike opens his mouth to argue, then catches the stubborn, tight line of Chuck’s frown and sighs, giving up.  Chuck frowns at him for a minute, then huffs through his nose and looks away.

“...But,” he says, “If he starts yelling at you again, and you don’t like it, and you’re not gonna hurt him…”

“Ha!”  Mike still wants to fight--wants Chuck to fight, heck, that sounds amazing, even if Mike is pretty sure Chuck’s more likely to hurt himself than anybody else--but he lets that one go for now.  “Cool.”

“Yellin’? Who?”

Jacob has emerged from the store with the bottles over the door, carrying a tote full of bottles and bags.  “What’s goin’ on out here?” he says mildly, taking in Chuck’s uneasy hunch and Mike’s eyes--still pulsing faintly, lit up.  “Something happen?”

“Nothing,” says Chuck.  Mike, who was about to explain the whole thing, closes his mouth again.  “Did you get what you were looking for?”

“Sure did!”  Jacob hefts the tote--Mike reaches out unprompted, hands open, and Jacob snorts and hands it over.  It’s surprisingly heavy.  “Come on, you two, we got places to be.”

Mike keeps an eye out for more yelling people asking him to do things as they walk, but nobody else seems to want to bother them.  Honestly, most people don’t even seem to notice them, unless it’s to say hi to Jacob and keep walking.  Mike is used to stares and whispers wherever he goes, people saluting--it’s kind of nice to just drift along, anonymous.  For once, he gets to just watch.

Jacob trades veggies for coupons, trades coupons for parts, trades favors for potting soil and gossip for seeds until Mike’s head is spinning with it.  Jacob seems to know this web of endless trades and bargains by heart, but there are _so many faces,_ so many deals and rules and understandings.  No neat, sterile transfer of credits, and a drone delivery minutes later.  Down here, people deal in “I’ll pay you back later” and “Did you hear?” and “got one for you, took me a lot of looking…” and Mike can’t keep up.  

“I just keep a file,” Chuck says, when Mike expresses this.  “Y’know, ‘this guy makes parts, that lady trades information’, but yeah.  I dunno how Jacob remembers it all.”

“Still got it,” Jacob says smugly, and hands over the newest delivery to Mike for carrying.  “I’m just about done for the day, though.”

“What?”  Mike isn’t ready to go back, though, not nearly--there’s so much to _see_!  “But--” and then he remembers himself.  Talking to an adult, right.  “...Yessir.”

“Hey now.”  Jacob squints at him.  “I ain’t a ‘sir’, kid.  Anyway!  I’m done, don’t mean you have to be.  I’ll drive back up, you kids can keep wandering around as long as you want.  Just call me for a pickup.”

“Seriously?!”  Mike’s heart leaps.  “Oh man--yeah, that sounds great!”

“If it’s not gonna be too much work,” Chuck mumbles, “I mean, you don’t hafta, we can just--”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.”  Jacob waves him off, and Chuck blinks at him, startled.  Mike wonders, sometimes, about the way Chuck acts around Jacob--Mike can’t stop thinking of him as a superior officer, as many times as Jacob tells him _stop calling me sir_ , but Chuck just... _cringes_ from him.  It makes Mike want to go find some of those grouchy old R &D executives and punch them in the face, for a whole other set of reasons from the obvious ones.  

“We’ll be back in time for dinner,” Mike says, and Jacob laughs--doesn’t explain why, just shakes his head.

“You should try some of the restaurants around here,” he says, and fishes in his pocket, pulling out some scraps of paper.  “Here.  Coupons for the store.  Oughta get you a meal or two.”

“We gotta get pizza,” Chuck says earnestly, tugging at Mike’s sleeve.  “It’s _so good,_ Mikey, you’re gonna love it.”

“Sure!” Jacob says, good-humored, and takes his groceries back from Mike, heading toward the distant, towering shape of Sasquatch.  “Say ‘hey’ to Antonio for me.”

\--

Mike bounces around downtown like a pinball, after Jacob is gone, dragging Chuck behind him half the time as he runs up to trace neon signs with his fingertips, stares into tattoo parlors, restaurants, antique stores.  Chuck tenses up every time he talks to somebody, but when Mike says something strange, mechanical or garbled, people just look him up and down and say something like “... _don’t have these in Deluxe, huh?_ ” and Mike goes “no, they totally don’t!” fervent and gleeful.

They’re out front of a trader’s stall, Mike digging around in ancient games, Chuck flipping through crumbling paper-and-ink books, when the warning sirens go off.

People immediately scatter.  The merchant snatches his goods out of their hands, shoves them into his bins and pulls metal sheets down over the windows, locking down.  Mike spins around, staring up at the sky as urgent red screens flash in the air above them.   _Enforcer Drones Incoming_.

“Oh,” says Chuck, high and startled, and snatches Mike’s arm, dragging him out of the middle of the street.  “Oh _shit_ oh shit oh shit--”

“Enforcer drones?”  Mike stares up at the sky--far above, red gleams of light are growing rapidly closer.  Ten, maybe twenty.  “Why?”

“Kane _does_ this,” Chuck hisses, and hugs his arms across his chests, pressing back against the wall as the distant whirr of repulsors gets closer.  “ _Just to freak people out, to remind them they’re not safe_ \--”

Mike’s stomach twists, but it doesn’t feel like fear.  He’s _angry._  He’s so angry.

“They are safe,” he says, low and hot.  “I’m gonna _make_ them safe.”

“Mike!”

“TEXAAAS!”

Mike and Chuck whip around, argument forgotten.  Somebody is sprinting down the empty street toward the hoard of approaching bots, a stocky figure in a black jumpsuit.  He lets out a whooping war-cry at the top of his lungs, throws himself into the air and grabs hold of a bot. The drone screeches and spins, but the guy just hoots and yells some more, grappling to hold on.

“Oh _yeah!_ ”  Mike says, and dives out from under his cover, watching avidly.  The guy is holding on with just his legs as the bot bucks under him; he’s pulled what looks like a pair of hand-guns on a chain out of his jacket, firing straight down into the bot’s polymer shell and yelling like a madman.  Mike gapes up at him for a second, utterly poleaxed and completely thrilled, and then Chuck yells “ _Mike get down!_ ” and he ducks just in time to avoid having his head taken off by a swooping bot.  

Its guns tear along the street and up the side of a building, and Mike pushes himself up with his eyes burning, his teeth bare.  These are the people Kane wanted him to kill.  These are the bots Kane wanted him to become, this is what _Kane wants,_ and Mike is _so sick of it--_

 _TARGET ACQUIRED_ , his brain snarls, and for the first time since his first mission Mike snarls along with it.   _NEUTRALIZE._

Mike dives to one side as the bot makes another pass toward him, rolls out of the line of its fire and comes up running, lit up, processing his surroundings with inhuman speed.  People, houses, rubble.  More bots, swooping in.  

Mike grabs a piece of concrete and wings it at the lead drone so hard he almost knocks it out of the air.  Its eye shatters, its polymer buckles.  Mike laughs and spins around, searching through the mess around him--there.  An almost-straight bar of old metal, nearly as long as Mike is tall. He wrenches it out of the stone, bends it straight again and turns back to the horde of bots.

There are...a lot _less_ of them now.  Mike hastily readjusts his mental count to five--no, four, another one just went down.  The crazy guy with the guns on a chain is spinning his guns wildly, still riding his bot like a wild thing twenty feet in the air.  He’s only holding on with his legs, a gun in either hand, roaring and hooting and putting smoking craters into any drone that flies too close.  People are clearing the street, and Chuck is--Chuck--where’s Chuck?!

“I told you to stay _down_!” Chuck says, high and cracked and right by Mike’s shoulder, and something bright, eye-searing green goes singing past Mike’s ear and takes a bot out of the sky with a thundering _BOOM_.

“Chuck,” says Mike, startled, and then again as Chuck pushes him to one side, a skinny hand hard as steel on his shoulder.  “Chuck, what--buddy, _run!_ ”

“I’m not _running!”_  Chuck yells, and his voice is trembling but his hands are still, glittering with metal.  All the inhumanity Mike couldn’t see, could forget about so easily, is unfolding from Chuck’s bones in a rush of hot ozone and neon plasma.  Another two bots are wheeling around toward them, and Chuck is standing his ground, and Mike is-- _burning,_ every nerve lit up like he hasn’t been in as long as he can remember.

The two bots swoop down toward them and Mike is about to take off running when Chuck makes a harsh, terrified, furious noise and fires one, two, three times, picking them out of the air.  “Mike,” he says, loud and high-pitched over the _BOOM_ of drones hitting the ground in flames, “Mikey, you can’t fight enforcer drones with a _stick!_  Find somewhere safe, I-I’ll--Mike no _where are you going--?!”_

Mike’s brain kind of shuts off a little bit, after that.  He’d forgotten how that used to happen--not like an override, where his body moves without him, following somebody else’s orders.  This is more like...his brain and his body going on autopilot, working together seamlessly.  His feet move before he has time to think, reacting to things his eyes haven’t had time to process yet.  Everything is clear and perfect and _amazing_.  Chuck is yelling somewhere, firing again and again, taking out more bots--Mike drives his metal pole through another one’s eye, hacks one metal arm off, batters at the polymer casing until his staff is bent and the robot is a dented mess of sparks and ruin.

And then his brain murmurs _threats neutralized_ , and he realizes the screaming has stopped.  

The bots are all smoking on the ground.  The guy with the guns is picking himself up from the corpse of his, dusting himself off and looking pleased.  Chuck is standing at the side of the street, shoulders heaving and eyes furiously flashing, scanning the sky.  

Chuck was _fighting._  Mike stares at him some more, taking in the ready, wary way he stands, the quick flicker of his eyes and the weapon on his arm, and feels--he feels…

“Mike?”  Chuck blinks and looks down at him, and the weapon collapses back away again, vanishing under his skin.  “Mikey, hey.  You’re okay dude, we’re okay.”  

He was so cool and now he’s being great again, and Mike likes him a _lot._  He’s so brave and smart and--

“ _Mike,_ ” says Chuck, and he’s leaning in close to Mike’s face now, looking at him like he’s worried.  “Your heart’s really going fast, dude, I’m getting alerts.  Hey, talk to me.”

It feels so good.  It feels like--chocolate, and touching, and--

\--but he can’t talk about that.  That makes Chuck go all hunched up and red in the face and unhappy, and he’s so amazing like this Mike doesn’t want to ruin it.  

“I’m good,” says Mike, and grins.  The warm, good feeling across his body and between his legs feeds into the rush of his heartbeat and the lit-up brightness of all his senses, which feeds back into the good feeling--he’s a circuit, a generator.  He’s on _fire._  “Wow!”

“Hah.”  Chuck relaxes a little, smiles back at him.  “...guess you can still get an adrenaline rush just fine.”

 _Adrenaline rush._  That’s a familiar set of words, yeah, that’s one of the good feelings, definitely.   _Wow._  Mike want to kill a hundred more drones, run a mile, bust into Kane Co. tower and punch Kane in the face.  Reach out for Chuck and--and--do _something_.  He’s not sure what, yet, but it would be _great._

“Hey!”

It’s the guy who was riding a bot.  He’s got a black and red jumpsuit on, unzipped to the waist over a slightly grungy tanktop, and he looks like Mike feels, all wide eyes and dangerous grin.  He punches Mike in the arm, one-two and a slap on the back, and Mike doesn’t _stagger_ but he does jerk forward with the force of it.  The guy hits _hard._

“That was _awesome,_ ” he says, and punches the air.  “Texas had it under control but it’s cool, he’ll let you look cool too.  We punched Kane’s flying toasters in their ugly robot faces!  Yeah!  Hwa-cha!”

“I’m--sorry, _who_ are you?”  Chuck says, like he doesn’t know the guy and isn’t sure he wants to.  The guy doesn’t seem to notice the tone.

“I’m _Texas_ ,” he says.  “Duh. Who are you?”

“Uh--”  Chuck looks frankly startled to be asked.  “I’m--Chuck.”

“Oh.”  Texas snorts.  “You scream like a little girl baby.”  And then turns back to Mike as Chuck sputters.  “We gotta spar some time, that kicked butt!”

“Mike,” Chuck says, and Mike’s starting to recognize the voice that means _maybe we should talk about this I’m pretty sure it’s a bad idea,_ but screw that this guy is _awesome._

“Mike Chilton,” says Mike, and offers a hand.  The guy shakes it _really_ vigorously, and for the first time in a while Mike feels the warm little hum of a contact adding itself to his comms list.  “Totally, call me whenever.”

“Sweet,” says Texas, and lets go of Mike’s hand to give his palm a stinging slap before pulling away.  “Hwa-cha!  Texas out!”

“Yeah,” says Mike, amused and pleased and still totally incapable of getting his grin under control.  “Yeah!  Cool!”

“...Mike,” says Chuck, as they watch Texas go marching away.  “Please tell me you’re not gonna actually call him.”  
“Are you kidding me, dude?!”  Mike laughs.  “Did you see him ride that drone?  That was so cool!  Almost as cool as your--”  he holds up an arm and mimes pulling back on a slingshot.  “When did you start kicking butts?”

“Oh, I, pff, well,” Chuck says, successfully distracted from his disapproval by sudden, happy embarrassment.  “I just...shut up, dude.”

“I could watch you smash bots all day,” Mike says, in total honesty, and grins at the way Chuck’s starting to go red--he’s still smiling, not freezing up, so this is okay, for some reason.  “That was great.  You were great.”

“It’s--all the implants,” Chuck says, but he can’t stop smiling.  “Y’know.  Targeting system.  Stuff.”

“It’s all _you._ ”

“Quit it.”

“No, dude, seriously!” Mike nudges his side--misjudges the force a little bit, if the way Chuck winces is any indication, but a second later he’s shoving at Mike’s arm and laughing again.  “I figured I was gonna be--”

“Hey-- _hey!_  Isn’t that that crazy robot?”  

The voice comes from behind them, and the suddenness sends MIke tensing up all over even before he registers what the words are.  His whole spine runs hot and cold, a sudden, shocking _bad_ feeling like-- _a strike you weren’t ready for, a glinting gun scope you didn’t see and they’re already firing this is going to_ hurt--  “The Ambassador?”

\--

Chuck hasn’t been taking care of Mike for long, but his hair is already starting to grow out.  It was a severely-cropped scruff when he arrived in Motorcity; now it’s a shaggy mess that stands up in funny spikes when he wakes up.  It's starting to fall more in front, and the longer it gets the more he looks like himself, the grinning kid Chuck grew up with.  Less like the terrifying, mad-eyed combat unit he found staggering down 44th with bloody knuckles.

...but apparently he doesn’t look different enough.  There’s a man standing behind him, staring as Mike turns around.  They’re watching each other with almost identical expressions of fear and defensive hostility.  Mike doesn’t have a weapons system, but from the way his shoulders tense and his hands twitch, he’s inches from labelling this man a hostile and going into defense mode.  

“H-hey,” Chuck says, and steps forward, fighting not to wince when the man’s eyes go to him instead.  “We’re not looking for trouble--”

“No way,” says the guy.  “It really is him.  Holy shit.”

Mike winces all over at the words, starts to open his mouth and then forces it closed again.  After seeing him so fierce and brilliant and utterly secure in his own skin, it hurts even more than before to watch him shut down like this.

“Look,” Chuck tries again, even though when the guy turns to stare at him instead if makes the inside of Chuck’s chest feel like it’s compacting.  “He’s not--whatever you heard--”

“I tried to stop,” Mike cuts over him, louda and convulsive, and Chuck can see the glitching in his muscles, the irregular jerk and flex of his hands as he forces them to stay still.  “I tried.  I couldn’t.  He just shut off my brain.  Made me do it anyway.  Sorry.  I tried to stop.”

“It was really you, though,” says the guy, half scared, half aggressive.  He doesn’t seem to have a weapon--nothing that fits the specs in Chuck’s head, he’s not standing like he’s about to go for a gun.  Chuck can feel the blood pounding in his arms anyway, the places he could open up his weapons systems.  “You’re the Ambassador.”

“I’m Mike,” says Mike.  “Mike Chilton.”

“ _Mikey, we should go,_ ” Chuck mumbles, and grabs his arm.  “Seriously, you don’t have to explain--”

“I attacked their city,”  Mike says, pained and a little bit too loud, and Chuck winces all over as one or two people glance up, looking around for the source of the words.  

“You _literally_ didn’t have a choice,” he points out, when the sky hasn’t fallen a second later.  Mike makes a discontented little noise and folds his arms.  “You don’t have to apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

“If he can make you do things, why aren’t you attacking people right now?”  the guy asks.  Chuck grits his teeth.  “If he--”

“Can you back off, dude?!”

“Chuck!”  Mike grabs his shoulders.  “It’s okay, bro.  Seriously, i-i-it’s okay.  Nnh.”  He shakes his head, throwing off the glitch.  “...let me talk to him.”

“But--”

“Hey.”  Mike squeezes his shoulder, smiles a little crookedly.  “If somebody tries to hurt me I know you’ve got my back, dude.  But he’s not.  He just wants to know stuff.  That’s okay.”

 _What if he wants you to tell him something you don’t want to tell him?_  Chuck wants to ask, stupid and pathetically protective.   _What if he messes you up and I have to watch you cry again?_  But instead he just stands there, frozen, watching as Mike bends his head to the man’s level and starts walking, leading him away until Chuck can’t hear them any more.  

They talk for a solid five or ten minutes, during which time the man’s face shows every emotion from mistrust to anger to fear to something like sympathy, and everything in between.  By the end, he’s settled into a kind of thoughtful suspicion.  He glances over at Chuck and asks something--Mike glances over too, then smiles and nods.  Chuck can’t see his mouth moving, can’t hear what he says, but whatever it is it’s pretty brief.  The guy glances back at Chuck again, this time with his eyebrows raised.  Back to Mike and asks something with his brow furrowed and a dubious frown on.  Mike nods.

And then it’s over.  First contact is done, the man is backing away and then starting off down the street, occasionally glancing back at Mike and Chuck with a look on his face like he’s not sure what to make of them.  Mike stares after him for a while, and then turns back and strolls to where Chuck is standing, smiling a tired smile.  

“See?” he says.  “We’re cool.”

“You’re okay?”  He doesn’t look 100% okay.  His shoulders are hunched like he’s carrying something heavy and his body is a mess of jitters and tremors.  “What did he ask you?”

“Just...stuff.  About things that happened.”  Mike’s mouth thins a little.  “It’s not fun.  Talking.  About it.  But I’m okay.”

“Ready to go home?”

Mike grins and slings an arm around his shoulder, and when he smiles, some of the exhausted unhappiness fades from his eyes.  “Yeah,” he says, and squeezes.  “Yeah, let’s go home.”


	6. hear me out, specialist chilton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike meets someone new, and remembers something old. He also starts a new project--he doesn't know how to _drive_ a car (yet), but if this "Julie" girl is serious about her offer, he's going to need wheels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN TEN THOUSAND YEARS. I'm sorry, I got very distracted by dragons.

Mike doesn't sleep peacefully that night.  He doesn't follow the cycle he did the first night--stillness, motion, terrible, jolting spasm, stillness again--the simulations are gone now.  Chuck almost wishes he hadn't deleted the patch, now.  Mike's open about the simulations, not even flinching as he describes the ways his programming killed him over and over again.  But when Chuck tries to talk to him about the dreams that wake him up screaming, Mike can't even look him in the eyes.  His shoulders slump in, his whole body goes tight and tense and his hands clench, white-knuckled.  

It probably has something to do with the way he asks clumsily not to sleep alone most nights, shakes until Chuck turns some dim nightlights on, balks away from tight spaces.  Chuck stops asking after a while--squeezes him really close and talks to him as he sleeps and pretends it's okay that Mike still shakes through his dreams.

It's bad, tonight.  The extra stimulation, the new data, the bot attack--it's a lot to process.  Mike wakes up seven times, just enough to gasp in air and stare around and reorient himself.  After the last time, Chuck grabs his shoulder.

“I can try to do something about those dreams,” he says quietly, and Mike blinks at him in the dark, eyes still pulsing green-gold.  “Just for tonight.  If you want.”

Mike nods, wordlessly grateful, grabs Chuck and pulls him in to hug him hard and tight, and then lies back down and closes his eyes.  Chuck digs around in Jacob's ancient collection of digital films, splices together videos of golden beaches, swaying trees, long-gone scenes of peace and quiet.  Mike shivers when Chuck uploads them and does the fewest possible patches to stream them into Mike's subconscious for him--then he goes still, mumbles softly and settles back.

\--

Mike wakes up at eleven in the morning from quiet, confusing dreams.  He feels… good!  He doesn’t have a headache any more, his body doesn’t hurt, his brain feels quiet and warm like the room around him.  He tries to think back, and eventually manages to dig up a vague memory of Chuck kneeling down next to his bed, reaching out to him.  The nightmares hadn’t come back after that.  Just peaceful images, distant and unfamiliar but soothing.  

Mike eases over onto his side a little bit further, and grins to himself a little ruefully at the sight of a messy head of blonde hair resting on the mattress next to him.  Chuck is still where Mike remembers seeing him; kneeling next to the bed, one hand laid out on the mattress, face smushed into the sheets.

There’s a smudge of dirt on his nose, big shadows under his eyes.  Mike notices vaguely, from this close, how Chuck’s eyelashes are weird and pale and long--not as light as his hair but still cool-looking.  The scars from his eye enhancements cut through the line of them, tracing the too-thin angle of one cheekbone and down to his jaw.

It’s pretty rare Chuck actually holds still long enough for Mike to just stop and look at his face.  Not that Mike really stops either, or tries to get a good look.  When you’ve been looking at a guy’s face since you were both kids, you don’t really think about what he actually looks like.  Mike is very familiar with the deep, sharply-shadowed sockets of Chuck’s eyes, the ungainly, freckled arch of his nose, the hint of an underbite.  He knows the mobile shape of Chuck’s lips, the pale articulation of his throat and his jaw, his cheekbones, the flash of big, worried blue eyes.  The way they crinkle up when Chuck grins.  Mike doesn’t have to look.  He knows his best friend.

...Except he _doesn’t_ , not all the way.  There are new things now, things have changed, like the scars on Chuck’s skin and the way he stood his ground against those bots.  For just a second or two, Mike saw his face and Chuck was looking right past him, eyes fixed on a threat; ready to fight and sure he could win.  

Mike grew up because he didn’t have a choice. He never really realized, deep down, that the scrawny, gangly little boy who used to hide behind Mike from bullies had grown up too.

Chuck shifts a little in his sleep like he’s remembering the bot attack too, chews restlessly on his lip for a second and then turns his face into the sheets with a little groan and goes still again.  In the dark of the room, a faint blue light pulses through his eyelids a couple of times.  He’s definitely dreaming, and it doesn’t look like a very good one.  

Mike frowns to himself and reaches out to lay a hand really gently on his best friend’s hair, enjoying the feeling of softness against his palm just as much as he did the first time.  When he draws his fingertips through Chuck’s hair, Chuck tenses up and then breathes out, quiets.  The tightness around his eyes eases a little bit, which Mike is pretty sure is a good thing.  He smiles to himself, scritches Chuck’s scalp a little bit and then settles into the sleepy warmth and focuses on feeling.

He lies there, pleasantly sleepy and still warm all over, for a long time.  His chronometric function says it’s twelve and a half minutes; he pets Chuck’s hair for most of it, but it’s so rare to see him quiet and still, not weirdly scared by the fact Mike likes this.  Likes _him_.  He has to take advantage of the opportunity just a little bit.  Mike runs a fascinated finger down the bare, freckled nape of his neck to the unyielding struts of his spine; follows them down to the collar of his shirt.  Touches the shadows under his eyes with just a fingertip, then one cheekbone.  Then--

...No, but he shouldn’t, Chuck would 100% be red in the face and avoiding Mike’s eyes already if he was awake.  He gets embarrassed when Mike touches him, even more embarrassed when Mike tells him how much he likes it.  But--Mike _wants_ to, and Chuck told him it feels good, said it right to Mike’s face he didn’t mind...

Mike is still hesitating, one hand just barely resting on Chuck’s cheek, thumb hovering over his lower lip, when Chuck stirs again, and this time he doesn’t just settle back down.

“ _...‘N,_ ” he mumbles, and blinks blearily.  When he opens his eyes, Mike is still close enough he can see the tiny power nodes implanted in his irises, the network of brilliant, hair-thin conduits that flicker in Chuck’s eyes.  “... _Sir, ‘s insufficient reserves--can’t…_ ”  

And then he blinks awake and his eyes focus.  Mike freezes in place, abruptly self-conscious.  Chuck blinks at him, and then for just a second, smiles a very small, sweet smile, surprised and bright.

“... _Mike_ ,” he says softly.

And then, a second later, he seems to realize what he’s seeing.  His eyes flicker down to the hand on his face; his mouth opens very, very slightly, his lip brushes Mike’s thumb.  It’s just as soft as Mike remembers it being.

“Uh, I,” Chuck says, and his eyes are really wide now.  Mike is staring at him and Chuck is just staring back.  One of them really needs to move but it’s not gonna be Mike.  Mike is pretty sure all of his muscles just glitched all at the same time.  The silence lasts for an endless, frozen moment, and then Mike swallows hard and forces his voice to work again.

“ _We slept in, dude_ ,” he says, really quiet and hoarse with sleep, and Chuck twitches, apparently startled to hear him talk.  He sits up abruptly, and Mike’s hand hovers stupidly for a second before falling back to the sheets.  

“Mike!”  says Chuck again, a lot louder and higher this time.  “Good--morning?”

“‘Morning, Chuckles.”  Mike pushes himself upright with a groan, rubs his healing knuckles and then twists luxuriously in bed and stretches, head to toe.  Things pop and flex all through his body and it feels _amazing._  It aches, but not like taking a punch.  A lot better.  “Dude, I slept _so good_!”

Chuck is still staring at him as he stretches, but he shakes himself a little bit at that and manages a smile.  “The--the dreams helped, then?”

“I think so, yeah.” Mike relaxes back down again and rolls his shoulders.  He still feels soft and warm and happy and weird inside, like some part of him is still asleep.  “Thanks.”

“No problem,” says Chuck, tight and a little bit breathless.  He stands up, tugs his shirt straight and rubs his eyes.  “Yeah, no, no problem.  Glad I could… help?”  And then, really fast, “So--so I was thinking about yesterday, uh, last night, and… we can go out again today!  I-if you want.  You were right, I shouldn’t have tried to tell you you couldn’t--”

“Ahh, buddy, quit it,” says Mike comfortably, and reaches up to snag Chuck’s waist, pulling him down onto the bed.  Chuck falls clumsily onto the mattress next to Mike with a squeaky yelp.  He almost topples over into Mike’s lap--catches himself with a hand on Mike’s thigh and accidentally headbutts him in the ribs instead.

“Whoa!” Mike says.  And then, before Chuck can get upset at him, “--Let’s just stay in today!”

That takes Chuck aback, enough to make him stop with his mouth open and stare at Mike instead.  “Wh--huh?  Seriously?  But… you liked it out there, you were… having a good time.”

“I have some stuff I wanna do here!”  Mike says, because he’s not gonna deny that Motorcity is literally the most amazing place he’s ever been, that’s totally true.  And if he mentions that he wants Chuck to be happy and chill again, Chuck is going to feel bad for not being happy and chill the rest of the time.

Mike’s spent weeks now trying to relearn how to read people's faces, and almost all of his practice has been on Chuck.  Chuck’s just right there, emotive and loud and… _feeling_ things that Mike has to learn how to understand again.   And somehow, kind of halfway through the process, Mike got… better at it than he ever was before the overrides.  He may not get _why_ Chuck feels the way he feels about stuff, but he’s at least starting to get the hang of telling what Chuck feels, period.  

Right now, what he’s getting is that Chuck is nervous, happy that Mike is picking the safe option, but not sure it’s okay to be happy.  Kind of half-smiling at Mike, hunched a little bit.  His knee is pressed against Mike’s, warm as they both shift a little.

“I wanna build a car,” Mike says.

Chuck’s face goes through about five different expressions in the space of like two seconds.  Mike, who is focusing with his fiercest concentration, picks up on shock and then fear and then relief and then a kind of cautious intrigue.

“…You wanna _build_ a car?”

“Yeah!”  He’s thinking about it, Mike can totally get him to help!  Mike sits forward, grinning wide.  “Bro, think about it!  We can—can—can—can—”

“Mike?   _Mike!_ ”

“Can--cann _nnh_ \--I’m— _okay,_ ” Mike growls, and feels around in his head, eyes closed.  He can feel that, the thing that’s broken.  Something is catching and hitching.  He turns his head, staring around at the inside of his skull.  Distantly, he sees green light through his eyelids--hears Chuck makes a soft, startled little noise.  “I’ve got-got-got-g-got it.”

There’s not really a physical way to describe it, but it’s _kind of_ like putting his shoulder into a jammed door and slamming it open.  Putting his weight into something, and feeling it snap loose and move freely, like it’s supposed to.

Mike opens his eyes and blinks, squinting into green light.  There are datascreens hovering around him, but Chuck isn’t touching them; he’s still sitting where he was, staring at Mike.  As Mike moves, the datascreens wink out one by one.

“Mike?”  Chuck says cautiously.

“I’m good,” says Mike.  He’s proud to notice that there’s not even a hint of a wobble in his voice.  Even though he hasn’t glitched like that in a long time, has been hoping it wouldn’t happen again.  He’s fine.  Mike’s good.

“Yeah, but-- _how_?”  Chuck reaches out and catches the last screen before it can vanish, scrolling, frowning.  “You don’t know anything about programming.”

“Yeah,” says Mike, “But I know the inside of my head, dude.  Spent a lot of time stuck in there.”  He grins, and almost completely means it, even though the words make Chuck wince.  “You just gotta hit the right stuff, y’know?  Find where the orders are and punch until something breaks.  It didn’t get rid of the overrides, but it messed them up pretty good--”

“Uh… no,” says Chuck.  He’s staring at Mike like Mike just started growing a third arm  “That’s not how it works, dude, it’s an _override_.”

“Well, overrides aren’t 100% or anything,” Mike points out--pretty fairly, he thinks.  “I mean, you’re still _in there,_ you can still…”  but Chuck is shaking his head.  “What?”

“I’m _not,_ ” says Chuck.  “When they--overrode me…” he catches on the words for a second, his face is too pale and his voice trembles, but he forces his way through it, goes on faster and shakier.  “--when they overrode me I… you can’t _fight_ orders, you can’t think about them, you just follow them.”

“I mean, it wasn’t easy,” Mike says, startled.  “But if I felt like I had to say ‘no’...”

“You can’t _say no_ to an override!”  Chuck says, high and tight and bordering on hysteria. “That’s what _makes it an override!_  You just hear them tell you, and you do it!”

“Yeah, your _body_ does, but your brain--if you know you gotta fight--”

“You think I didn’t _try?!_ ”

“No--Chuck, dude, that’s not what I--”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Chuck says, agonized, and drags his hands through his hair. “I can’t--I couldn’t--!”

And then, suddenly, he stops.  Takes a deep, deep breath.

“...No,” he says, and Mike is both startled and relieved to see him reining it back in, losing that frantic edge.  “No, _hff,_ okay.  There has to be a reason it works like that.  This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Uh…”  It's good to see him not freaking out about this, but not as good to think about what kind of orders he was getting that he “couldn’t fight”.  Mike opens his mouth with a hundred different questions all lined up, closes it again.  “Dude?”

“I can figure this out,” Chuck says.  “There has to be a reason.  What was the difference?  Between you and me?”

“I… dunno, dude.”  Mike watches him pace, still bemused.  “You were a strategy unit?”

“That wasn’t a thing,” Chuck starts, and then almost in mid-step he stops, mouth falling open slightly.  “...Wait.  Or--wait!  Okay.”  He waves a hand; screens unfold as it drags through the air, fanning out.  Blueprints, long lists of code that sort themselves into graphs as Mike watches, totally bewildered now.  “No, this makes sense though!  If I’m a… ‘strategy unit’...” he sketches quotes around the words with his fingers, and Mike snorts.  “--Then you’re a _combat unit_ , dude.  If you want a thinking system to go out into a combat situation, to fight at 100%, they have to be able to make some decisions!  They can’t just do whatever they’re told.”

“Uh… sure?”

“Your gut is more reliable than some commanding officer’s orders,” Chuck says.  He doesn’t seem to be listening to Mike anymore, doesn’t even really seem to notice he’s there.  “You _couldn’t_ just shut down and cede frontal control when an override came through, you would’ve gotten shot.  I’d need a scan of your frontal lobe to map--”

Mike flinches, before he can stop himself.  “Why?” he says, sullen and tense, and Chuck stops in the middle of a sentence and stares at him, startled.  Mike folds his arms, unfolds them, shifts his weight around uncomfortably.  Doesn’t meet Chuck’s eyes.  

“Look,” he says, and that bitter edge won’t go away, won’t leave his voice.  “Who cares how they messed up my brain, how they messed up yours, _whatever_.  Does it _matter_?”  

“...Yeah,” says Chuck, like it’s obvious.  “It does?  It totally matters, dude.”

“Why.”

Chuck falters again at the flatness of Mike’s tone, but rallies.  “Because… okay, Mike, I know it wasn’t easy, but when you came down here you were _fighting Kane’s orders._  He gave you an executive override command and you were…”  his eyes flicker, and for a split second before he gets it under control, Mike’s own face appears at the corner of one of his screens.  Wild-eyed, blank-faced, inhuman.  Mike’s spine prickles.  Chuck waves a hand hastily, banishing the recording.  Hurries on.  “I can’t do that.  I _can’t_ fight overrides, Mikey!  Not-- _ha!_ ”  It’s not much of a laugh, high and sharp and unhappy like he just remembered a joke that’s really not funny.  “--Not if my life depended on it!”

He stops for a second, jitters in place like he’s trying to figure out what to say.  Like there’s too much, he can’t pick.  When he finally manages to put the words together, his voice is smaller again, quiet and a touch shaky.  

“...It can’t just be because you're you and I’m… me,” he says.  “I don’t believe that, dude, I _can’t_ believe that.  Does that even make any sense?”

Mike takes a long, slow breath in--forces it back out steady and even.  “...Yeah,” he admits.  “Yeah, buddy, it does.  I just…”  How is he even supposed to explain what he hates about this?  They scanned him so many times, overrode him and had him climb onto a table, strapped him down until he couldn’t struggle and aimed machines at him that clicked and whined and rattled. They’d given him orders and scanned his brain while he followed them, they’d done surgery on him while he lay on one of those stupid strapped tables with scanners around him on every side.

“I don’t like scans,” he says shortly.  “I don’t like screens.”

“It wouldn’t be like… like the med scans up there,” Chuck says, and settles onto the bed next to Mike, cautious and slow.  “Can I just...can I do it, and if it’s setting stuff off, I can stop?  I just...”  He trails off without finishing, doesn't need to.

Mike weighs his options.

On the one hand, Chuck.  Mike trusts him, wants to say yes just to stop him looking at Mike like he’s scared Mike is going to punch him for asking.  And he’s obviously… pretty messed up, about the differences between their overrides.  But on the other hand, scans and tests and… Mike doesn’t want more people messing around with his brain.  

...But it’s _Chuck._

“You gotta stop,” Mike says finally, slow and painful.  “If I say ‘stop’, you gotta stop or I--I could…”

“I won’t make you hurt me,” Chuck promises, like he knows what Mike was going to say, and some of the cold tension drains out of Mike’s chest.  “Here.  I’ve got a bioscanner, just… lie back.”

Mike lies back on the bed and forces himself to lie still, hands clenched at his sides and every muscle so tight he’s trembling.  He doesn’t really realize he’s clenching his eyes shut until Chuck reaches down and lays a hand on either side of his face.  Mike jumps, eyes snapping open.

“You’re okay,” Chuck says--leaning over him, nervous and determined, eyes fixed on Mike’s face.  “Don’t stress, Mikey, I gotcha.”  One hand leaves its place on the side of Mike’s face for a second to brush his hair back from his forehead, comforting and familiar.  “...This won’t hurt.”

Mike has heard that lie enough times he instinctively tenses up at the sound of the words, but… it doesn’t.  It doesn’t hurt, and it keeps on not hurting.  Chuck’s hands just rest there on the sides of his head, holding him still.  Mike watches Chuck’s eyes fall shut; sees blue light starts to pulse faintly through his eyelids.

“... _Nice,_ ”  Chuck mumbles, and one thumb taps gently against Mike’s temple a few times.  “Cool, uh… stay right there.”

If he focuses, he can feel Chuck looking through his mind, flicking through processes one at a time.  The longer he lies there, the more the tension fades away, the more his body accepts that nothing terrible is going to happen.  

So.  Chuck wants to know about overrides.  Wants to scan and see what overrides do.  So...

“You need to do an override,”  says Mike quietly.  It still makes Chuck jump and squeak.  “Right?”

“N-no,” says Chuck, but his eyes flicker away from Mike’s guiltily.  “I don’t need--I can, uh.”

“You need to do an override,” says Mike again, and smiles just slightly when Chuck gives him an agonized look.  “It’s okay, bro, I’m… okay.”

“You sure?”

Mike snorts, rolls his eyes a little. “Yeah, dude. I trust you.”

Chuck swallows, takes a breath and nods. His voice cracks when he says, “Okay. Override Omega.”

Mike twitches all over and goes still, his body giving up command of itself as that familiar hold clamps down on his brain--but this time it's Chuck, his best friend who would never hurt him, who'd never misuse his power. This is okay, Mike’s safe, however unpleasantly familiar it feels.

“C-command,” Chuck says, “um, touch your nose.”

Mike’s arm swings up and he boops himself on the nose with one finger, almost smiling. Trust Chuck to come up with the most completely harmless and kind of adorable order possible.

“Good,” Chuck says absently, and this time Mike does smile, small and pleased.  Chuck smiles back vaguely, eyes focused on somewhere far away, somewhere inside his head.  “Huh,” he says to himself, and his fingers twitch, tapping Mike’s cheek.  “... _Huh_. Okay.  Uh… Mike.”

Mike blinks and turns his head as much as he can with Chuck’s hands still on his face.  “Yeah?  Present, dude.”

“This is not an order,” says Chuck, every word very clear, and Mike feels something slide out of lock in his head, not pausing the constant, slight strangeness of the override, but changing it a little.  “I’m not gonna force you to do this, dude, but… I need you to try to fight the override.”

Mike breathes out through his nose, refuses to tense up.  “Got a lot of practice,” he says, and knows he doesn’t quite manage to make it sound like a joke by the way Chuck kind of winces all over.  “No--no, dude, it’s cool.  I can do that.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.”  Chuck’s hands twitch against his temples.  “ _Okay_ ,” he says again, a little more strongly, and frowns, focusing intensely on his bioscan again.  “Command… raise one hand in the air.”

Mike’s hand lifts into the air, twitching only faintly as he remembers he's not supposed to obey this one--but it's _Chuck_ , Chuck _asked_ him to and this isn't dangerous, isn't a problem, he can do this for his buddy--

“Uh,” Chuck says, “Mikey? Were you, uh, trying to resist, or--”

“Ngh,” Mike says, and sighs as his hand drops back to his side. “No, I--it's hard when it's you, I don't _need_ to fight it. Sorry, I'll try again.”

“Okay. Put your hand on my shoulder.”

Except Mike doesn't even _want_ to resist that one, he _likes_ touching Chuck, putting his hands on him, throwing an arm around him. His arm barely hitches midair as his hand moves to Chuck’s shoulder.

“Mike--”

“Agh, this is _hard!_ ” Mike says, injured. “I--breaking it was never _easy_ , you know, I had to throw everything I had at it! And I don't--I know you're not gonna make me do anything bad, so I just--I'm tryin’, dude, it's just… really different.”

“Hmm,” Chuck says, and lets out a shaky little breath. “Okay, I--think I know how to fix that.”

“Okay, cool,” Mike says, closing his eyes to watch the flickering in his head. “Go for it.”

Chuck takes a deep breath and swallows audibly. “Hit me.”

Mike starts to move--stops, eyes snapping open.  Chuck is leaning over him, face really pale but eyes really focused.  

“Command,” he says, really slow, steady, but there’s a scared little tremor under his voice _no--_ his hands are shaking slightly against Mike’s face.  “Hit me.  Hard, dude, as hard as you can.”

“Wh,” Mike starts, and shudders, knots his hands up in the sheets on either side of him, trying to force them back down.  “Nnnnno, no, Chuck--”

“Almost there,” Chuck says, but Mike barely hears him--he can’t, he can’t hit Chuck, a full-strength punch would-- _no_ \-- “Almost…”

“ _Stop_ ,” Mike gets out, raspy and loud, “Stop!”

“What?” says Chuck, and then, “--Ah, uh--terminate override session!”

Mike goes limp, panting, as the terrible compulsion fades away again.  Chuck is still touching him, trying to say something, and it’s too much--Mike shoves his hands away, pushes himself up on the bed.  Breathing, desperate, free, alive.  Chuck pulls back his hands.  Closes them into shaking fists, draws them close to his chest like he thinks they’ll escape and hurt Mike if he doesn’t control them.   “I’m sorry,” he’s saying, fast and desperate, “I’m sorry, Mikey I’m so sorry--”

“You said,” Mike gets out, and his voice breaks a little on the words, cracks, young and stupid with hurt.  “Said you weren’t--gonna make me hurt you!  You said--”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Chuck says desperately, and doesn’t reach out, keeps his hands knotted up in his lap.  “It had to be something you’d fight, I knew you wouldn’t do it, but I had to--I shouldn’t have… Mikey, I’m sorry.”

Mike closes his eyes for a minute.  Breathes, just for a minute.  The too-familiar feeling of fighting an override, of struggling against impossible odds, the instinctive panic and fury--they can all fade now, he’s fine.  Mike’s _fine._

The stupid, betrayed little pang of heartbreak is less quick to go away.

“You had to,” he says, finally.

“No, don’t do that,” Chuck says immediately, and if anything he looks _worse_ now, sickly and pale and upset.  “I shouldn’t’ve done it, it wasn’t okay, and you shouldn’t--make excuses for me.”

“I’m not _mad_ though,” Mike says, more stubborn now, pulling himself back together.  “I get why you did it--”

“Mike,” Chuck says, very sharp and shaky and quiet.  Mike goes quiet, stops and stares, frowning.  “...It’s cool if you forgive me.  But me hurting you _isn’t_ ‘okay’, bro.  You get that, right?  Like, you… you see the difference.”

“No,” says Mike frankly.

Chuck stares at him for a long, long second, then sits back, dragging his hands down his face.  “... _Fine,_ ” he says finally.  He sounds exhausted.  “--No, fine.  Okay.  I’m… glad you’re not mad.  I wasn’t trying to stab you in the back, dude.  I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, bro,” says Mike, and ignores it this time when that makes Chuck wince again.  “What did you dig up?”

A lot, it turns out.  Chuck pulls up screen after screen of a structure Mike vaguely recognizes as a brain, full of shifting patterns of light and little specks that Chuck says are nanoimplants.  Chuck’s hands play deftly across the screens, turning the models back and forth, pointing at one place, then another.  Pointing out the parts he designed with a tone of guilty pride; the things he didn’t, with a kind of offended disgust.  

“...Only _partially_ overriding your frontal lobe,” he finishes eventually, and spins two model brains around on his screen.  “See the differences here?”

Mike looks, and then looks harder.  “...You sure that’s not just some dirt on your screens, dude?”

“Ha ha,” says Chuck, and flicks a wrist.  The scans change, some points of light vanishing, some brightening, some appearing in miniature networks.  “...These are my scans, from right after my last surgery.  Look, right here.”

“...That’s all it takes?”  It’s just a little gathered network of light, a dozen little points scattered across the front of Chuck’s brain.  Mike glances over; Chuck is scowling at the screen, like those little white dots have personally wronged him.  There’s a kind of exhausted hatred in his eyes, and it makes Mike’s gut churn uneasily.  When Chuck finally answers, his voice is flat and toneless.  

“That’s all it takes,” he says.  “Couple of incisions, a nanotechnician with the right plans… walking, talking Kanebot.”

The nasty feeling in Mike’s gut gets sharply worse.  “You’re not a bot.”

“Might as well be!” Chuck says, and the flatness has been abruptly replaced by vicious, humorless fake enthusiasm, ringing false and too loud.  He blinks hard, and the screens wink out around them, leaving them in the dim light from the door.  “I mean!  Ha!  Kane could’ve ordered me to walk off the edge of the tower and the last thing I’d ever have said would be _acknowledged, commencing unit termination._ ”  He says the words so bitterly Mike barely realizes what they mean at first--then he processes what Chuck said, and his stomach drops, icy and sick.  Chuck isn’t looking at him.  “... _If he was in the mood to be that nice about it,_ ” he says, really quiet, more to himself than to Mike.  “Which he wasn’t.  Asshole.”

“What do you mean, he _wasn’t_?”  Mike says, startled and upset, and Chuck jumps like he half-forgot Mike was there.  “Did he--hurt you?  Did he order you to do something--”

“Mike, don’t worry about it.”  Chuck waves his hands prohibitively, looking pained.  “Dude, it’s over, okay?  It didn’t work, I got out, it’s _fine_.”

“Got out…?”  Mike stops, puzzled, and then stiffens up as two and two come together in his head.   _The other techs got me out._ “...You told me they ran tests on you,” he says, and knows he’s right when Chuck’s eyes skate off to one side, his lips go all thin and unhappy.  “What kind of tests?”

“Oh--jeez, bro,” Chuck groans.  “Look, don’t worry about it?  Seriously, just don’t.  It was just stress-testing, it wasn’t--nothing like what he did to you, okay?”

He’s trying to make it sound like nothing, but _stress testing_ isn’t--it doesn’t… _he_ could’ve _ordered me to walk off the tower, if he was feeling nice…_

Mike is--he’s-- _furious,_ he’s so angry he could burn away.  “He tried to _work you to death_?”

Another telling little wince.  Mike can’t sit still, he’s too angry; he bursts up off the bed and onto his feet, pacing in tight little circles.  “ _Don’t worry about it,_ ” he repeats to himself, disbelieving, “--don’t _worry_ about it, Chuck?!  He tried to murder you!How long did he make you go for?”

Chuck’s mouth works for a second like he’s chewing on his tongue.  Then, finally, “...Two days,” he says, flat and quiet.  “Mike, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Two _days_?!”  God, and he can imagine it, all-too-vividly--Mike’s seen his own face when he’s overridden, he can picture Chuck with his face drawn and flushed, lips chapped and breathing ragged, falling and shuddering and forcing himself back up over and over and over again.  Mike’s done multiple missions in a row without stopping, just twelve hours, maybe sixteen, and it made his body feel like it was crumbling away from the inside out.  Two _days._

“They kept bringing the techs up to see me when I passed out,” Chuck says, very brief and quiet.  “I worked with those guys, we were…” he sighs through his nose, shakes his head.  “...Kane’s mistake.  They got me out, they got me down here, I’m fine now, it was way less terrible than what happened to you, can we drop it?”  And then before Mike can argue, “Looks like I was right.  Your overrides work on a different part of your brain from mine.  That’s all I wanted to know, that’s--it makes sense.”

He still looks… wrong, all tired and hurting. Like he's feeling just as battered inside as Mike, right now. Geez, the morning started off so good, too. It was all warm and soft and sleepy, with lingering peace from the dreams Chuck put together for him, and now that's all gone.

Mike wants it back.

He can't go back to sleep, doesn't really want to either, but--he could maybe stop thinking about all this awful stuff for a while and do something better. Distract himself and Chuck both.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and forces his shoulders to relax. “Okay,” he says, turning to Chuck. “So, we're good, then. You figured it out, so you don't have to, like, wonder about that stuff anymore. Right?”

“Yeah, Mikey,” Chuck says, hunching a little. “We're good, promise, bro.”

He opens his mouth and Mike can just tell he's going to apologize again for--that order he gave--and Mike’s done thinking about all of that right now, so he cuts Chuck off. “Okay cool! Come on, dude, let's go build a car.”

\--

Car-building is more complicated than it looks.  Jacob has a way of moving around, locking stuff in place, tightening bolts and rearranging things, that makes it look easy.  But once they’ve got all the pieces and parts pulled together, Chuck stares at them all and goes “...Where do we even start?” and Mike shrugs helplessly and dives in.

Chuck downloads blueprints.  They learn new words for things, _transmission, engine block, drive-converter, turbo-charge._  Jacob has found them the ancient, rusty skeleton of what he calls a “muscle-car”, hauling it out from under a half-collapsed overpass somewhere far on the outskirts of town.  He sits on the edge of the hideout, drinks a kale smoothie and shouts down tips as Mike and Chuck get progressively greasier and sweatier.

Mike is all for not stopping until the car will start, but in the end Chuck’s stomach starts to make a noise like an angry animal and Jacob starts rustling around muttering about deliveries and bad knees.  Mike sighs and relents, letting himself be pulled away.

Another three people recognize Mike while they’re out this time.  Chuck hates seeing him go through it, over and over again--flinching when he’s called by that name, _Kane's Ambassador._ Smiling painfully at Chuck and then explaining himself to strangers, over and over again, expressionless and tense.  Every so often during the explanation, he’ll gesture at Chuck and the person he’s talking to will glance over and give him a look like they’re sizing him up.  It always makes Chuck feel really… small.  Inadequate.  

The third time breaks the pattern.

“Specialist Chilton?”

Mike goes from laughing and open to stiff and wary in the space of a split second.  He doesn’t… whip around, exactly, it’s more controlled than that; a deliberate, smooth turn, fists rising and eyes glowing.  The girl standing behind him steps back as Chuck turns too, slingshot already out, core throbbing as his body draws plasma reserves.  “I’m not a threat!” she says, and some part of Chuck notes the weirdly specific phrasing even as the cyborg part of his brain registers a pre-programmed command code.  Some of the sudden, icy aggression that had immediately welled up in him fades back away again.  

“Sorry,” says the girl.  She’s got big, dark eyes, long dark hair that pours over her shoulders like ink, glinting deep red in the lights.  “Let me try that again, um… hi.  I’m Julie.  And you’re Mike Chilton, aren’t you?  The Ambassador.”

“What are you doing here?” Chuck asks, before Mike can answer that one.  “What do you want?”

“I had to come find you,” says Julie earnestly.  “I heard you wanted to fight Kane.”

Mike isn’t moving, eyes flashing and face blank, so Chuck breathes out first and lowers his hands, forcing his shoulders to untense.  “Yeah,” he says.  “How did you find us?”

“A drone saw where you guys were headed,” Julie says.  “I was in the feed, I erased it before Kane could get a hold of it, but I, uh… I figured out where you were going.”  She smiles, almost shy.  “I knew who you had to be as soon as I saw you.  Both of your files are marked ‘deceased’, but he’s going to figure out it’s you guys soon.”

“You were… in the surveillance feed?”  Chuck pulls his bangs to one side and squints at her, and a kind of shiver prickles up his spine for some reason.  She looks… sweet, small and dark-eyed and… scary.

Chuck’s a scientist, he isn’t a fan of gut feelings and instincts, but in Kane Co. R&D you have to trust it when some part of you says _no, this one is dangerous._  Julie, whoever she is, isn’t somebody to mess with.

“You’re a _dissenter,_ ” Mike says, and finally lowers his fists.  “But--you’re still in the tower?”

“I’m a mole,” Julie says, and clenches her delicate hands at her sides, determined.  “Or--I will be.  Once I have somebody to feed information to.”

“But that’s--” Mike shakes his head, and Chuck can see the look on his face, the fascination and the almost-fear.  “If he finds out about you…”

“He won’t,” says Julie.  “I’m good at what I do.”  She smiles, and that thrill in Chuck’s spine turns into a full-blown shiver.  “...Kane doesn’t make just _anybody_ an executive intern.”

“Oh, crap,” says Mike.  Chuck is inclined to agree.  There are only six people on Kane’s executive staff, and once you’re appointed to a position there it’s a position for life.  If what she’s saying is true, Julie is on the fast track to becoming one of the most powerful people in Deluxe.

“And you’re...giving that up?”  Mike is still watching Julie closely, almost warily.  

“It doesn’t matter how high up you are in the system if the system is rotten,” Julie says.  “What he’s doing to Deluxe is wrong.”

Mike relaxes all over, a full-body sigh.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I know.  Yeah.  It is.”

“I’m sorry,” says Julie.

Mike doesn’t ask “for what?”  Just looks at Julie, quiet and a little pained.  “You didn’t do it,” he says.  “The only person I blame is Kane.”

“Yeah, but I’m sorry anyway,” says Julie.  “He shouldn’t have been allowed to do that.  To either of you.”

“Nobody tells Kane what he’s allowed to do,” Mike points out, a little bitterly--Julie half-laughs.

“I know,” she says.  “That’s the problem.”

\--

They take Julie out to lunch. She’s been down to Motorcity a couple of times, she says, but she’s never stayed long and she’s never eaten the food.

Jacob drops the three of them off at Antonio’s and tells Mike and Chuck to call him when they want to be picked up. He gives Julie a thoughtful frown before smiling vaguely, and pulls away with a growl from the big truck. Man, Mike can't wait to learn to drive.

Julie’s face when she takes her first tentative sip of a cherry smoothie is amazing, and Mike laughs and pulls out two of Jacob’s repair coupons to get two more for him and Chuck. He feels his hand glitch as he holds out the coupons; the server startles a little bit, but doesn’t say anything.

Julie and Chuck are talking about things Mike’s never heard of, data-streams and system permissions and… key-sources, something like that.  The whole thing is gibberish to Mike, but it’s cool to see Chuck talk about the things he likes to do with somebody who knows what he’s talking about.  He sips on his chocolate smoothie and listens happily as Chuck slowly unfolds from a cautious, tensed-up statue to animated and happy and waving his hands around in big, illustrative sweeps.

Mike has given in and traded his last coupon for a dish of some kind of potato food with spicy-sweet sauce and cheese on it by the time the conversation turns to Kane Co. and cyborgs.  He eats instead of contributing, enjoying the sharpness of the flavors and the taste of the smoothie--not as good as real chocolate, but still sweet and cold and amazing, wow--feeling his body convert food into power.  Every so often, Chuck sneaks a hand over and steals some, groaning a little bit at how good they taste.  It’s good.  He’s good, they’re good, it’s a good noise.   Mike really wants to eat all of the fries himself, but he really likes the way Chuck enjoys them, uninhibited and _good._

“The Ambassador is an urban legend upstairs, now,” says Julie eventually, after one last thoughtful sip of her smoothie.  

“The project was classified,” Chuck points out thickly, and licks sauce off his lip, swallowing with an effort.  “ _Mmh._  ‘S really good, dude.”

“It’s sweet,” says Mike, testing it out.  “And spicy, right?”

“Yeah!”  Chuck grins, a little startled but mostly just...proud.  Mike did good!  All senses functioning to optimum. Mike’s chest feels warm, and it has less to do with the spicy sauce and more to do with the way Chuck is grinning at him.  

...Julie.  Right, Julie.  

“Classified,” Mike repeats, and frowns at Julie.  “Right, so.  How did you find out?”

“Classified things aren’t classified to me,” says Julie, with a little bit more smugness than is strictly necessary.  Mike grins.  Julie grins back.  “But I’m not the only one who knows.  Classified isn’t the same as secret.”

Chuck goes “Mm,” like Julie just said something that makes sense.  Mike looks from one to the other, waiting for somebody to explain what they’re talking about.

“Uh… yeah it is?”  He says finally, when Julie just sips her smoothie and Chuck just stares thoughtfully at the table.  “You’re not allowed to tell people about classified projects, that’s what makes them classified.”

“You would think so,” Julie says dryly.  “That’s definitely what Kane thinks!  Like if he tells people not to say anything, that’s it, he’s got it all figured out.  But there were too many people working on the project and they were too upset by what they were doing for it to stay quiet.  The good ones were spreading rumors, and the bad ones were bragging.  People… know.  Sort of.  Nobody really believes in the _rogue cyborgs_ from the _doomed supersoldier program_ , that would be like… believing in ghosts.”  She grins, a sharp little catlike grin.  “Kane likes keeping it that way.  He doesn’t like the idea of people knowing what you two did.”

“What we did?”  Mike sounds bemused.  “What, the… cyborg thing?”

“No,” Julie says.  “The _fighting back_ thing.”

Mike’s whole body lights up, a sudden, brilliant flare of adrenaline.  Julie’s smiling at him, and Mike smiles back, wide and fierce.  “ _Oh_ ,” he says.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  Julie grins at him.  “You guys put a pretty good dent in last week’s bot patrol _without_ knowing it was coming--imagine what you could have done to it with some inside information!”

“I’m in,” Mike says immediately, “I’m _so_ in--” and then he hesitates, glances over.  “But, uh, I mean if Chuck--”

“I’m in,” says Chuck.  

Mike blinks, startled, and sees Chuck sitting up really, really straight, perfectly still in his seat.  His hands are clenched really tight on his knees, but he’s got that look on his face like he had in the fight, strange and calm and tense at the same time.  When he sees Mike staring a second later, he loses some of the hard certainty--his shoulders slump a bit.  

“It’s crazy,” he says, and shrugs, “--we’re gonna die.  But we gotta, right?  I mean… we can’t--we gotta.”

Mike’s smile falters a little.  His chest feels...painful, warm and aching like there’s something stuck there.  The way Chuck says that, _we’re gonna die,_ like he’s so sure, the resigned determination in his voice….

“We’re not gonna die, buddy,” he says, and Chuck breathes out through his nose, a sharp, almost exasperated little huff.  The image rises up in the back of Mike’s mind, unwanted,  from the place where the simulations used to live--a plasma bolt, a wet, tearing thump, and Chuck falling to his knees like Mike has a thousand times in his dreams.   _Simulation failed_.  Just the thought makes a hot and cold shock of anger and fear shudder down his back.  “You’re _not_!  I’m not gonna let that happen.  Trust me.”

“I do,” says Chuck quietly, and there’s a faint tremor in his voice again, a familiar note of anxiety.  “...I do, bro, but… sometimes you fight as hard as you can, and you do your best, and you lose.”

There’s a moment of silence.  Mike is jittering a little bit, still uneasy and upset at the mental image of--things he doesn’t want to think, Chuck lying crumpled on the ground, a startled yelp cut off in a wet gurgle, a _scream_ \--Chuck is sitting there, still quietly determined, sure they’re going to die but willing to fight anyway, and Mike is…

Mike is…

“...I think you guys need some time,” Julie says quietly.  She’s looking from one of them to the other, frowning just a little.  “To think about this.  It’s a big decision.”

“Uh…” Mike blinks, shakes off the quiet throb of combat protocols that are trying to activate in his brain.  “Yyyeah.  Yeah!  Sorry, dude, give us a minute.”

“You can have more than a minute,” Julie says, and checks a data-screen.  “I have to get back upstairs for my internship.  But you can call me!”  She holds out a hand; Mike takes it, and feels a new contact slot into place in his comm. “It’s… okay, if you have to say ‘no’.  We’ve all got…” she hesitates again, then finishes, quieter, “...we’ve got a _lot_ to lose.”

“Yeah,” says Mike, and glances back at his best friend again.

“But if we do decide to do this,” Julie goes on, “it doesn't make sense to go into it thinking we're going to lose. We're not. Use inside information, maybe recruit some more people, and we can counter every move Kane makes. We're going to _win_.”

“Yeah!” Mike says again, and her smile is just as fierce as his.

“People form gangs down here, right?” she says. “We could form a gang to fight Kane. There have to be a lot of people down here who'd join up for that in a heartbeat.”

“Man, yeah, that'd be awesome!” Mike says, thinking immediately of Texas. He's gotta call that guy, get together and hang out so they can talk about this stuff. Texas is already fighting Kane all by himself.

Julie looks from Chuck to Mike, nods at them both. “You guys think it over. Call me,” she says, and slides out of the booth.

The boys are in a thoughtful frame of mind on the way home in Jacob’s truck. They don't talk, and Jacob seems content with the silence.

Mike and Chuck still don’t talk once they’re out of the truck, but they both head for the shelves of tools and parts at the same time, and fall into step quietly pulling the battered frame of their own experimental car open.  Trying to get her up to speed, make her run, fix all the broken pieces.

The silence eventually gives way to an easy quiet, which melts into quiet conversation.  Mike buries his arms in engine parts, imagining he can feel a faint hum in his fingertips when he touches the engine block, like a heartbeat waiting to kick into gear.  Chuck pulls up schematics, fits his slightly thinner arms and hands into depths Mike can’t reach, and together they change things around and rebuild better until they’re both greasy and sweaty and tired.

Eventually, they have to finish up.  Mike sits back, looks their work over, and grins.  He can imagine flying over the landscape like Sasquatch does, but with Mike’s hands on the wheel, his foot on the gas.  It’s  an amazing thought, and it makes a delighted shudder run through his insides.  

Chuck doesn’t seem to have noticed Mike has stopped working.  He’s lifting a piece of piping and belts as big as his torso into place, augmented muscles straining in his shoulders and chest, his eyes are sparking and flaring blue and he looks kind of… pale and blotchy.  Mike hasn’t been doing nearly as much of the lifting and moving--Chuck won’t let him, still, even though he’s doing so much better--but he’s feeling the crumbling gnaw of hunger on his insides.  If he’s hungry, Chuck has to be totally starving.

“Hey,” says Mike.  “You hungry, dude?”

“Uh…”  Chuck clangs the car part into place and waves an oily, smudged hand absently.  “In a minute.”

“You should eat somethin’.”

“Just a _sec,_ Mikey.”

Now this is a familiar conversation.  Mike rolls his eyes fondly, sits back and watches Chuck work for a minute or two, and then says “...Oh man, I’m _starving._ ”

“Huh?”  Chuck actually looks around this time, eyes focusing on something other than work, frowning.  “Oh.  You should eat, bro!  Your upgrades drain a lot of calories.”

“Yeah,” says Mike, and then as Chuck grins at him vaguely and starts to turn back to the car, “...Can you come up with me?  I got a bug I need to run by you.”

“What, seriously?”  Chuck turns back to him again, worried and frustrated.  “What’s going on?  Is it that thing where you get stuck on one flavor again?”

“I dunno,” says Mike, and backs away a little bit, coaxing Chuck with the promise of a new problem to solve, distracting him from the project a bit at a time.  “Can you look for me?”

“Yeah, totally!” says Chuck, and hesitates for a second, glancing back.  “...But…”

“Ah, nope!”  Mike says, and lunges forward to grab Chuck’s arm, using the strength he’s been saving up to swing his best friend right off his feet and up into Mike’s arms.  Chuck shrieks at a startlingly high pitch and volume at the sudden motion, but he only flails for a second before he figures out what’s up and grabs hold of Mike instead, breathing hard and startled.  “Nope, we’re done down here, let’s go get some food.”

“There wasn’t even a bug, was there?”  Chuck says, and he sounds kind of accusing but mostly he sounds like he’s trying not to laugh.  “Not cool, dude.”

“You weren’t gonna come unless I helped you out!”  Mike protests, and puts Chuck back down again carefully.  Chuck rolls his eyes, but doesn’t turn back to the car.   _Success._ Ten out of ten, Chilton, great job!  “You’re hungry, I’m hungry… let’s just grab some dinner already!”

“I was gonna go eat,” Chuck protests, without much force.  Mike just laughs at him, throws an arm around his shoulders and starts strolling up toward Jacob’s hideout.  “Seriously!”

“Yeah, like, tomorrow morning after you passed out on top of the car.”  

Chuck opens his mouth and then closes it again and just sighs through his nose.  “...Jacob probably left stuff in the fridge,” he says, defeated, “Fine!  Fine, I’m _coming,_ jeez.”

Jacob’s food is… interesting, especially when Mike’s taste-buds and stomach still rebel against him pretty frequently.  But Mike is hungry enough he really doesn’t care.  “Awesome!” he says eagerly, and feels his stomach rumble.  “Mm.  Do you--does he have any more, uh, chocolate?”

Chuck makes a funny small noise and kind of twitches, but whatever happened (a glitch?) he gets it under control a second later.  "There might be some?" he says cautiously.  "But, uh… it's really expensive and really rare.  They have to trade with people from outside the dome to get it."

Mike's mouth drops open.  "Outside the--?"

"We can talk about this more in a second," Chuck interrupts him quickly, and presses a hand to his stomach as a faint growling noise comes from his belly.  "You don’t eat chocolate for dinner.”

“You don’t?"

“Sweet stuff is called ‘dessert’,” says Chuck firmly.  “You eat it _after_ you eat normal food.”

“What?”  There are _rules_ for when you eat what foods?  Mike scowls a little, already chafing at the restriction.  “Why?  That’s weird.”

Chuck tries to explain over dinner, which turns out to be a weirdly ambiguous loaf-thing made out of a brownish… something.  Neither of them really has the heart to try to figure out what it’s made out of, and it’s a little bit salty (Mike notices and says so, and Chuck beams at him, and it’s great) but it’s good enough.  It’s food, is the important part, and Mike is already feeling better as the calories flood his system and convert to power.  By the end of the loaf, meals and desserts and snacks are all still baffling, but at least now Mike is full and comfortable, and Chuck doesn’t sway when he sits still.

“Oh,” he says, while Mike dutifully stacks dishes and puts them neatly in the dishwasher.  “I’ll be right back.”  And he vanishes into the kitchen and comes back a minute later to flop down in the booth with a little brown square wrapped in paper.  “...Just one left!” he says, and holds up the chocolate.  “Here you go, dude.”

Mike reaches out eagerly--then stops, frowns.  “But--you should have--”

“You’re the one whose mouth just started working,” Chuck says, although he does throw a longing kind of look at the little square of chocolate.  But he sounds really determined.  “No, you take it.  I’m good.  Watching my weight, heh.”

Mike is about to answer that one, brow furrowed--Chuck is so skinny already, he needs to eat _more,_ not less, keep himself functioning--when he notices the wry twist of Chuck’s mouth and realizes a couple seconds late that it was a joke.  He snorts, startled, and Chuck grins, and that’s a good look.  Smiling looks good on him.  Mike smiles back.

The chocolate… tastes good.  And there’s a twist of that good feeling again, but it’s not like it was last time.  Mike lets the taste linger as long as he can before he swallows regretfully and sighs, happy but a little melancholy.  That felt _good._  He was kind of hoping it would happen again, and this time he could enjoy it more.  Oh well.  Still amazing.

Chuck is studiously avoiding looking at him on the other side of the table.  He glances up when Mike sighs, and Mike catches the way Chuck’s eyes dart down between Mike’s legs for just a second.  He drags his eyes back up a second later, meets Mike’s eyes for a startled moment and then looks away again.  

“It didn’t happen this time,” Mike points out, in case Chuck couldn’t tell by looking.  That… _spark_ is still there, still flickering somewhere in his gut.  Not as strong but… he wants...

“Mike?”

“Hey,” says Mike, abrupt and louder than he means to.  “Hey, can I touch you again?”

Chuck opens his mouth--shuts it again.  Opens it again, makes a kind of squeaking sound and then gets out, “...I, uh!  Wh-why?”

There’s never needed to be a “why” before.  Is this about when Mike touched his face and woke him up?  Mike, frowns, thinks about it, but the only real reason is just… “...I just want to.”

“I--I, uh.”  Chuck is chewing on his lip again, and Mike’s hand twitches.  It was soft.  He remembers really clearly.  He could reach out again, but he promised he would ask.  

Chuck looks like he’s fighting himself over something--maybe a programming thing?  But then a minute later he stops chewing his lip and stops frowning and sighs really heavy and long and goes “--I--yeah, no, y’know what?  Sure.  Knock yourself out, dude.”

Mike reaches straight for his face this time, because he’s been thinking about it for ages, ever since they fought those bots together--ever since this morning, watching Chuck’s face as he dreamed, quieting when Mike touched him.  He’s been thinking about the way the sizzling green light from Chuck’s weapons system uplit his cheekbones and nose and made his familiar, nervous face into something fierce and ready.  And then almost as much about how he frowned and tensed up in his sleep, and how Mike touching his hair seemed to make him feel better.  There was a long time there where Mike was pretty sure he would never be allowed to touch somebody again unless he was hurting them, but he made Chuck feel better.  

Chuck jumps at the touch, startled even though he okayed it.  But he doesn’t flinch away as Mike holds his face in both hands, feeling out the lines and planes and hollows that were lit up in the fight.  Just closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, sitting really still and tense all over.

“You were so cool, bro,” Mike says quietly, and Chuck kind of jumps and then freezes in place again.  Mike’s thumbs follow the line of his scars down both cheeks and then back up again, barely brushing the heavy shadows under his eyes.  

When Chuck opens his eyes to stare, Mike can feel the flick of his eyelashes against one finger.  He feels--aware, suddenly, self-conscious somehow, and he grins and presses his hands together, squishing Chuck’s cheeks so his mouth makes a funny shape and his nose wrinkles.  

“Real funny, dude,” says Chuck, and even his voice sounds funny like this, and it’s okay that Mike is laughing because he can hear Chuck trying not to laugh too.  “Really mature, you big butthole.”

“ _You’re_ a butthole,” says Mike, delighted, and pushes Chuck’s bangs back out of his face so he can see the way Chuck’s eyes crinkle up when he snorts and finally laughs.  “You’re a whole _butt_.”

“I’m so glad we got the part of your brain back that does witty insults,” Chuck says, and shoves him--Mike sways a little, laughing out loud now, and swings an arm around to get him in a headlock and make him squeak.  “--Mike!  Get _off!_ ”

“Nope!”  Geez, Chuck got flexible!  He keeps twisting away, scrabbling at Mike’s ribs as Mike tries to get him in increasingly-weak pins.  (Laughing makes him so _weak,_ why does it do that?  Glitch, probably.)  “Get--hff, haha--you little--!”  He throws his full weight forward and Chuck goes over backwards with a startled yelp, head bouncing on the worn-out plastic cushions.  “Gotcha!”

“You’re a _jerk_ ,” Chuck wheezes, high and squeaky and breathless with laughter, and Mike grabs his wrists hastily as Chuck slaps haphazardly at him.  “And-- _you’re_ a butt!”

“Yeah sure, but I win again anyway!”  Mike says brightly, and Chuck growls at him and bucks, almost throwing him off--Mike rides it out, laughing, and leans on him harder, pinning Chuck’s wrists with his full weight.  “Go on, say it, come on… who won…?”

“Death before dishonor!”  Chuck says, and jerks again, twisting--Mike’s ready this time, laughing and moving with him and then pressing him back down.  “Uhf!  Why are you so _heavy_?”

“Stop trying to distract me, dude,” Mike laughs and shakes him a little bit, pinning him firmly where he is.  “You gotta say it, or I’m not gonna let you up.”

Chuck sputters, flushed and out of breath and hair messy in his face, and… huh.  And he’s so warm, the place Mike’s knee presses against his side, the places they’re close--and they’re _so_ close--and it feels--

“B--wh--ugh!  Fine!  Mike wins!  You win, are you happy now?”

Mike shakes the moment off, startled by the intensity of his own distraction.  Grins and scrambles back, a little regretfully, to let Chuck up.  

“You’re still a butthole,” Chuck mutters, and gets upright, still pink in the face.  “Dumbass.”

“That’s rude, Chuckles,” says Mike, mock-hurt.  “That hurts.”

“I’m not talking to you any more.”

“Awww, no.”  Mike jostles him as Chuck folds his arms resolutely, trying to stifle his grin and look mad, not really succeeding.  “I’ll make it up to you, dude, don’t be mad.”  He shifts his weight closer, pretends to try a headlock and lets Chuck shove his arms away.  “You wanna wrestle again?  I’ll let you get on top this time!”

Chuck makes a strangled little noise that’s half like a laugh and half...something else.  Mike hesitates for just a second, uncertain, trying to read what feels like a sudden, subtle change in the air, and then Chuck is laughing and pushing him off.  “You’re crazy,” he says, just a fond statement of fact.  “Fine!  Y’know what, just go out scrapping and find us a better transmission tomorrow and I’ll think about it.”

“Deal!”  

“Cool.”  Chuck reaches out, swipes the last crumbs of his dinner up on a finger and pops it into his mouth, and Mike’s brain abruptly hitches up hard on something he can’t parse.  Chuck doesn’t notice him twitch--he’s already starting to stand up, shuffling around the booth on his knees to swing his legs out and push himself up.  “We need to go get some sleep if we’re gonna go out tomorrow.  Let’s get to bed, dude.”

“Uh--” Mike shakes the moment off, unfolds himself from the booth too and stretches.  “Sure!  Yeah.”  He doesn’t really _want_ to go to bed, but he does kinda want to get some time alone, think about...stuff.  A lot of stuff.

But even once he does get by himself, alone in his room with the door swinging quietly shut behind him, he finds he doesn’t really know what to think about.  It feels like there are loose ends swinging around his brain, pieces that are meant to go together, things he should be doing.  Should be _feeling_.  It feels like a hole in his functions, like a glitch.  

Mike struggles with the thought for a second, trying to figure out what feels so wrong--he can’t seem to put words around it, it’s just there in his chest.  An expecting kind of tension, a warm eagerness, a readiness to… to…

It slips away.  Mike stands there stupidly in the middle of his room for a minute, eyes squeezed shut and hands clenched into fists.  He tries to grasp the thoughts, fight the way they’re ebbing away from him, but the more he tries to get a solid grip on them the faster they seem to leave him.

Mike sighs and gives up on that one for the night.  He’s not even sure he can ask Chuck about it, mostly because he has no idea how to even explain what the feeling was, let alone what might be wrong.  He strips off his shirt, hangs it up neatly and climbs into bed instead, refusing to worry about it.  He’ll heal, he’ll figure it out, and in the meantime he’s got a car, and a new city, and he’s making new friends with crazy new ideas.  He’s got Jacob to tell him how things work down here, and he’s got Chuck back, both of them safe and healing and far away from Deluxe.  They can have fun, down here.  They can be friends like they were when they were kids, not just grabbing lunch together between classes and drills but actually hanging out!  Like they did tonight.  

Because tonight was _good,_ just really good, warm and close and fun and dumb, no drama, nobody getting hurt.  Mike runs over it all again in his head, relishing the memories--eating chocolate, messing with cars, meeting Julie and drinking smoothies, wrestling, laughing, _winning_ …

His brain catches there, sticks strangely on a sudden, sweet tremor of good feeling.  Replays the moment for him where he finally got Chuck pinned, both of them out of breath and red-faced and laughing.  Replays it again, again.  And it’s… a little different, every time.  Things change.

In his head Chuck doesn’t roll his eyes or shove him or shake the moment off--he squirms again, pinned and flushed, licks his lips.  Like… like maybe he doesn’t _want_ Mike to let him up.  He looks up at Mike and he looks…

...He…

That good feeling is back, creeping up on him, sudden and shocking when he notices it.  A slow, steady throb with his heartbeat.  Mike closes his eyes, frowning, listening to his body--there’s still this frustrating disconnect between his brain and his body, between the good feeling and what he needs to think to keep it going.  It should be _easy,_ but it feels like there’s a thick wall between the two.  But...okay, but he knows what caused it.  Maybe he needs to keep thinking about the same stuff!

Mike closes his eyes and thinks, almost experimentally, about his best friend.  About lying in his lap with Chuck’s hands in his hair, the worried, comforting murmur in his ear, the gentle touch pulling his thoughts together and soothing old scars...  

It’s not really a success--the feeling stays a low, warm ache in his skin, not growing or changing--but the thought does kind of make his chest feel hot and his throat feel tight.  That’s--no, wow, that’s a whole other thing.  He needs a different _kind_ of thought, he needs...hm.

...Okay.  So.  His best friend, lying under him and looking up through his messed-up hair, kind of… breathing a little bit hard, meeting Mike’s eyes with a wide-eyed, startled stare.  That image works.  That helps, and he focuses on that.  Tries to remember all the places he’s felt like this before.  More details offer themselves up--recent things, Chuck passed out on the couch, his shirt riding up to show a pale sliver of his belly, the way the chocolate felt, the sensation of soft skin against Mike’s fingertips.

And then, sudden and startling, something older connects like a shock.  A memory he’d forgotten, years ago, in the junior cadet barracks.  Other guys, gathered around a screen, sharing files.  Pictures that made Mike’s cheeks burn and his heart pound.  And...and he’d… later that night, he’d… oh.

\--

Chuck is almost asleep when the door to his room opens and Mike comes shuffling in, shirtless and wearing sweatpants.  He looks dishevelled and ruffled and a little unsteady.  It’s a familiar look, most common after a bad dream or a sudden attack of unwanted feedback, and Chuck starts to sit up, worried--Mike hurries over and then stalls, shifting uneasily from foot to foot, lingering at the bedside.

“I… I’m sorry I.  Pinned you,” he says, fast and awkward.  “It wasn’t my--I’m not authorized.”

“Not authorized…?”  Chuck blinks at him, groggy and worried, and Mike meets his eyes for a second and then lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted kind of shrug, lips tight and brow furrowed.  “You’re allowed to wrestle with people, dude, you’re allowed to win.  It was just a game.”   _And let’s just pretend we didn’t have to take a cold shower afterward_ , snipes the nasty, too-perceptive part of his brain that won’t let him get away with stuff.  Chuck ignores it.

“I thought about it,” Mike says, halting and flat like he hasn’t sounded for a while.  “I went back up here, and I thought about it.  I liked it.  It was good, but, it--unauthorized.  Inappropriate on company property.”

God, why does the way he phrases things have to sound so... _suggestive_ all the time?  It doesn’t help that “it was good” and “it felt good” seem to encompass everything from “it caused me  _bearable_ amounts of agony" to "it gave me a boner”.  Chuck sits up and drags a hand down his face, trying to wake himself up.

“You were _meant_ to like it,” he says.  Mike blinks, and Chuck thinks he sees the slightest hint of a hopeful softening to Mike’s ramrod-straight posture.  He’s standing like a soldier on court martial, it’s kind of freaky actually.  “You’re supposed to enjoy wrestling with your friends, dude, you’re okay.  I had fun, I, uh.  Liked it too.”  

“You did?”  Mike’s shoulders finally relax a little bit.  “But you didn’t--you weren’t--” he gestures with his hands, too vague for Chuck to even guess what the heck he means--Chuck frowns and then takes a wild stab in the dark.

“I’m not mad.  I liked it too,” he repeats.  “You’re okay, dude, c’mere.”

Mike crumples down, crawls into the bed with him and flops down on his side.  Chuck’s bed isn’t big, and together they take up most of the space in it, but Mike crowds himself guiltily to one side and Chuck presses back against the other to make room.  When they were kids, they just kind of sprawled over top of each other.  But they’re not kids any more, and… anyway, Mike probably doesn’t want to be crowded right now.

Being here seems to be helping, though.  Mike looks more relaxed already--and tired, now that he’s relaxed.  He yawns, wide and slow, fishes a pillow off the floor by the bed to shove his face into.  “...I’m sorry,” he says again, muffled, a little helpless.  “I wasn’t… _supposed_ to.”

“Yeah, you were,” says Chuck firmly.  

“But--”

“Mike--look.”  It’s kind of awkward trying to be serious when they’re both crowded into one slightly rickety bed, but he has to try because whatever caused this crap, it’s not okay.  Mike needs to be okay with feeling okay.  “If you ever take anything I say as, like… executive orders?  You can do things that feel good.  You can be happy about stuff.  Your old orders sucked, Kane put them in there to make you miserable and--you don’t have to be.  Miserable, I mean.  You can be happy.  I _want_ you to be happy.  And… and feel good.”

Mike is still for a second, then he takes a deep breath and rolls over clumsily to wrap an arm around Chuck’s chest and bury his face in one shoulder.  Chuck startles, then squeezes him tight, abruptly terrified.  But Mike doesn’t break down or anything.  Just holds on and presses his forehead against Chuck’s collarbone.

“You’re a pretty cool guy,” Mike says, really quietly.  “I ever tell you that, dude?”

There are a hundred different answers coming to mind-- _no you never really liked lying_ and _yeah sure dude whatever you say._ Chuck opens his mouth, and then closes it again and doesn’t say any of them.

“...I like you a lot,” Mike says, smaller with every word, bleary and drifting off.  “... _’s okay, right?_ ”

Chuck doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t matter.  Mike is already asleep.


End file.
